


We'll never be those kids again

by Mymlen



Series: Start of nothing [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Multi, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, mentions of past infidelity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23855224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mymlen/pseuds/Mymlen
Summary: It's the last year of the second wizarding war. Ginny is the only Weasley returning to Hogwarts, to fight her quiet battle against Death Eater teachers and a headmaster in the service of Voldemort. Draco is in hiding with the Order of the Phoenix, housed and protected by people he has considered beneath him his whole life. And Harry is roaming the English country side in an old, ratty tent, trying not to think about the people he left behind, or his own growing certainty that he is not going to make it through this war alive.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Series: Start of nothing [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1094526
Comments: 76
Kudos: 112





	1. Dumbledore's Army

This is how the last year of the second wizarding war passes: before the summer has ended, the Ministry falls to the Death Eaters, and in the same breath, so does Hogwarts. There are puppets put in place; the school and the government keep running under the thinnest veneer of normalcy, but it takes more effort to pretend now. Pretending is a luxury reserved for those who do not feel the looming closeness of September and mandatory Hogwarts attendance as a death sentence. Those who do not have to decide between trying to flee abroad and going underground. Those who do not have to wonder which of their friends they can still trust if they reach out.

**-**

It’s the last year of the war and Ginny is the only Weasley who returns to Hogwarts. By the time she boards the train, she has not heard from Harry, Ron or Hermione since the wedding, where they disappeared. She keeps quiet when people speculate about their disappearance. People still ask her about Harry. She was popular before, but this year her popularity is different. The younger students all know her name for some reason. She notices the way people glance her way during quiet common room conversations, when the names of the muggleborn students who haven’t returned are mentioned, when people dare to complain about Snape or the Carrows. For a while she thinks it’s because they want her to be Harry. If he had been here, they would all be looking to him, not her. It’s just that some of his infamy has rubbed off on her.

It’s Luna who tells her otherwise, in the greenhouses, during Herbology.

“You don’t look scared,” she says. “Everyone can tell.”

“That’s bullshit,” she says. “Of course I’m scared.”

Luna just hums.

“But not of the Carrows. Not of Snape.”

Ginny shrugs.

“They’re just bullies.”

“Most people are scared of bullies.”

-

The first part of the school year they spend their free time in the seventh-year boys’ dormitories. You never know who’s listening in the common room or the library. They’re a mixed group, some sixth-years, some seventh-years. Of course, it’s bothersome because they can’t invite their friends from other houses. Really, that’s all the conversation is at first – all of them wondering aloud if there would be a better place to hang out. It’s Seamus who brings up the Room of Requirement. It’s Neville who mentions Dumbledore’s Army, who brings out the galleon as if he’s embarrassed to still have it.

“Other people might have kept theirs too,” he says with a shrug.

That’s all it is at first. A small group of Gryffindors who activate the galleons, just to see if Hermione’s protean charm still works. Who wait in silence in the Room of Requirement to see if anyone will show up. That’s all it is at first, but it quickly becomes something more. Outside the walls of the castle, a war is raging. Inside, everything is the same. There is the sorting and house points and quidditch games. In so many ways, Voldemort is still the scared, abandoned child who found a home there, just as Harry did, and he cradles the traditions of the old school, guards them out of reverence and nostalgia, having forgotten long ago that these traditions are not the things that made Hogwarts a home.

There is a war outside the walls of the castle, and one inside it too. There may be classes and homework and feasts, but there is no safety there. It is not a home. The children learn magic, but mostly they learn to hide, to become invisible, to cast silencing charms on their beds and cry only when no one is there to see. It is, once again, a place where detentions leave scars. Where Luna squeezes Ginny’s hand under the table when Amycus Carrow’s vicious eyes fall on her and she is called to the front of the class. A girl in red and gold and a girl in silver and green face each other in front of their classmates, but only one raises her wand. She hesitates, but only for a moment. Ginny waits, and she is quiet and she is brave, and she might not be afraid of bullies, but she is afraid of the pain, because it is not the first time she has done this. They have Dark Arts once a week. The Carrows have favourite targets, and she has made sure she is one of them. She can feel her heart like a panicked bird in her chest. She wants to run. She wants to raise her wand to defend herself. She doesn’t.

There are more members of Dumbledore’s army than just Luna in this class. They all sit quietly and watch as Ginny drops to the floor. Their war is a quiet one. There is nothing stoic about the way she writhes on the floor or the way she screams. The Slytherin girl lowers her wand quick. She is praised by her teacher. Ginny slowly gets to her feet and both students take their seats. Another pair is called on.

Luna puts her arm around Ginny’s waist when they leave class. The Slytherin girl locks herself in a bathroom stall and waits for her hands to stop shaking.

-

There is a small group of students who meet in the Room of Requirement, and as the year goes on, it grows bigger. Luna leaves stacks of the Quibbler in there. Neville talks quietly with the younger students, though Ginny can’t imagine what he tells them. He brings murtlap essence and willow bark for the ones who get hurt. Ginny sometimes teaches hexes, or shield spells, but less and less often as the year goes on. You can’t fight Death Eaters with bat bogey hexes, or at least, you can’t when they’re running your school and your government. She doesn’t want anyone to get hurt because they tried to fight when they should have complied.

“We’re not exactly a defence club this time,” she tells Neville the first time they stay in the room overnight.

It’s late, but neither of them can sleep. Neville looks at the hammocks that appeared as soon as they needed them, for the students who can’t go back to their common rooms anymore.

“No, I guess not,” he says.

“We’re barely even a resistance movement. And we’re definitely not an army.”

“Does that bother you?”

She hesitates. She’s so tired her bones ache.

“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I just hate that we can’t _do_ anything.”

“We are doing something.”

And they are, she supposes. Refusing to participate in the brutality of Dark Arts lessons. Smuggling as many copies of the Quibbler into the school as possible. Showing the younger students the secret passages to get around the castle unseen. They’ve made a safe place in the Room of Requirement for the ones who need to hide for a while. They disrupt the daily life at Hogwarts as much as possible, sabotaging hallways and classrooms whenever and however they can. They have managed to start fires during three “muggle studies” lessons so far. It just feels so small. She sighs.

“I know,” she says. “But I want to _fight_. I want to… I want to fucking kill them.”

Neville nods solemnly.

“Yeah”, he says. “Me too.”

-

There’s always at least one of them staying in the Room of Requirement overnight. When it’s just her alone, she lies awake until the early hours, listening to the breathing and the restless sleep of their refugees and their soldiers. When Luna is there, she crawls into Ginny’s bed without asking and puts her stick-thin arms around her. She seems so fragile, with her odd, airy speech, her easy smiles and her wide eyes, but she isn’t. Ginny used to put herself between Luna and her bullies, tell them to piss off when Luna couldn’t. She has never been scared of bullies, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t scared. And she probably wouldn’t be able to explain it to anyone if they asked, but she knows that somehow, this, Luna climbing into her bed and holding her until they both fall asleep, is the same thing. A way of letting someone else borrow your strength.

It’s not like people don’t know. It’s not like they don’t see the way her and Luna touch each other’s hands and hair and shoulders. She waits for one of them to bring up Harry, all her angry arguments lined up in her throat, but no one ever does. She almost wants them to, just so she would get to make her case out loud.

She does feel bad. She misses him so much. She is so scared for him. That doesn’t mean she isn’t angry with him too. For breaking up with her. For leaving her behind. For taking Ron and Hermione with him, but not her. For the way he was watching Draco Malfoy over the summer.

-

This is how the last year of the wizarding war passes for the kids who have to end it: They spend the year roaming around the English countryside in an old, ratty tent, following up on vague clues, chasing gut feelings. They fight too much and bicker when they aren’t fighting, and none of it feels very heroic.

Harry lies awake too many nights, trying to sleep and giving up on sleeping, staring into the dark instead, trying to make himself believe that this is going to work. And sometimes he’ll pull out the marauder’s map and look at Ginny’s dot in the girls’ dormitory, or feel his heart beat fast and hard in his chest when she walks the hallways long after dark. Sometimes, more and more often as the weeks go on, her dot disappears, even at night. He knows that means she’s in the Room of Requirement, but it still leaves him feeling sick with nerves. And it’s so fucking unfair that Ron thinks Harry doesn’t have anyone to worry about.

Sometimes his mind slips, and he realizes he’s been watching the wrong common room, following the winding corridors of the dungeons instead of the towers, looking for a name that he knows isn’t there. Old habits die hard and all that. When he catches himself at it, he tucks the map away and feels guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so happy to finally be able to start posting this fic. This is going to be the last part of the series, covering all of book 7 (apart from the epilogue, obviously). It is quite a bit longer than the previous two, so I will be posting one chapter a week, and with the way the chapters are divided up at the moment, there will be 12 chapters total.
> 
> All my love to [Marlene](https://amorphine.tumblr.com/) for betaing and providing the emotional support needed to make this thing presentable.


	2. The Order of the Phoenix

This is how Draco Malfoy spends the last year of the second wizarding war: on the run and in hiding, but occasionally able to forget that that is what he is. Housed and protected by people he has considered beneath him his whole life, but who are willing to forget, for now, that they know this is how he thought of them.

The days after the wedding are tense, everyone fearing another Death Eater raid on the house. Draco knows that if that were to happen, he would just be another liability, and it almost makes him reconsider his decision. Maybe they would be better off if he just left as planned.

But he can’t. It barely even feels like a real possibility anymore. He might be going slowly insane with worry and boredom here, but he knows it would only be worse if he was somewhere in the tranquil, French countryside with no idea what’s going on.

That’s selfish, of course. Every reason he has for staying is selfish. But then, everything he has ever done has been done for selfish reasons. He is not sure he has it in him to do anything that doesn’t somehow serve his egotistic, self-centred interests. He never understood how Potter did it. But then, he supposes, the only choice is trying to make himself believe that it is also possible to do good out of selfishness. That being selfish does not have to mean being a coward.

So the next time the Order meets at the Burrow, Draco asks to stay. Explains that he would like to help in any way he can. If they’ll have him. He has lined up all the arguments for why they should let him join, why they should trust him, what he might be able to contribute, how he might still have useful information about the Death Eaters from his time at the Manor. It turns out none of it is necessary. The debate boils down to a quiet “we need all the hands we can get” and a “can you vouch for him?” directed at the Weasleys and his former teachers. Professor McGonagall brings up that Dumbledore had a hand in Draco’s initial escape from Malfoy Manor and that is apparently all the convincing they need.

“He should stay here for now, then,” Mr Weasley says. “As long as this is the Order headquarters, that makes the most sense. And he can help out around the house,” he adds, glancing at his wife. Mrs Weasley nods.

And so Draco leaves the attic and hesitantly shakes the habits of his self-imposed isolation. It’s both worse and better than he thought it would be. He does his best to avoid the Weasley children, their cold suspicion and obvious dislike for him, but Mr and Mrs Weasley are surprisingly easy to be around. They talk to him about trivial things. They ask him to help out with this and that. They leave him be when he decides to read the paper in the living room instead of his room, practicing not hunching his shoulders, fighting the urge to make himself smaller. And slowly, he starts to realize he quite likes the Burrow. It’s not at all how he imagined it. He remembers his father talking about how poor the Weasleys were, and in Draco’s mind, poverty meant something like a hut with holes in the walls and rats under the floors and everyone sleeping in one room. The Weasley house isn’t grand, but it doesn’t feel poor in that sense. He likes that there are always people around. He likes that the light is left burning in the hallway all night. The night time noises seem comforting rather than unnerving when you know the nearest room with a person in it is just below your own and not in another wing five minutes’ walk away.

Eventually, Ginny leaves for Hogwarts and Draco breathes a little easier. In fact, it seems everyone does. She was the one with the greatest aversion to his being there and she didn’t bother hiding it either, but he had underestimated exactly how much resentment stemmed from her alone.

He carries out his first real mission for the Order a week after Ginny has left for Hogwarts. Or at least the twins insist it’s the first real mission as they jostle him into their brother’s room, handing him a pair of Ron’s pyjamas and trying to cast cosmetic spells through their laughing fits. It isn’t quite what Draco had envisioned when he decided to join the resistance, but the Weasleys need a cover story for why Ron wasn’t on the train to Hogwarts with his sister, and that means Draco impersonating a Weasley with a bad case of spattergroit. It’s more than a little humiliating, but apparently going through it means he passes some incomprehensible character assessment in the twins’ eyes. They may not like him, but afterwards there are jokes about spattergroit, and they may be halfway at his expense, but he’s invited to laugh too.

-

For a while Draco assumes he is being kept in the dark about most Order business. Which is only fair of course. He doesn’t mind. Childish thoughts of how he could certainly handle more responsibility than he is being given are quelled quite easily by reminding himself of pretty much anything that has happened in the last two years and every single stupid thing he has ever done.

It takes a while before the realisation dawns on him that there might not be that much more to know – that what the Order does doesn’t look like much. It’s quiet work. It’s getting the right information discretely to the right people at the right time. It’s finding out who the Death Eaters are coming for next, making sure that they come upon empty houses. It’s managing the Burrow as long as it functions as headquarters – making it a place for people to gather and speak freely, a place to stay for those who need to lie low for a day or two, a place to go for the people who need to be patched up after a mission, bringing news that “yes, we got them out” or “no, they got there first.” It’s setting up a cauldron in a corner of the attic, behind old furniture and boxes full of rubbish for Draco to brew a disconcertingly large amount of wolfsbane potion.

It’s Lupin who suggests it at the first real meeting Draco gets to attend, to everyone’s surprise and most people’s discomfort. He may technically be part of the Order, but to most of them he’s still not trustworthy – some still care quite a lot about the mark on his arm, the ones who don’t consider him a frightened kid, and either way this is obviously too much trust to put in him.

“If I remember correctly, he did quite well in Potions,” Lupin insists.

“Wasn’t that just Snape playing favourites, though?” says Tonks.

“No,” Draco says and it comes out louder than expected. He clears his throat. “No, I’m… quite decent with potions.”

“Can you brew wolfsbane?” Mr Weasley asks.

“If I can get the ingredients,” Draco says carefully, and Tonks glares daggers at him.

-

It’s Draco who opens the door for her when she comes back two weeks later. That still doesn’t feel like his place, it’s not his house, but these are not good times to leave people waiting on the doorstep, and unfortunately, he was the one who heard the knock.

As soon as she has closed the door behind her, she slings the bag off her shoulder and thrusts it at him.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she says. “Some of this shit was hard to get.”

He nods, settling the bag on his own shoulder. It’s heavy.

“I’ll do my best.”

“No, you’ll get it right,” she snaps, and he winces.

He tightens his hand around the strap.

“Right. Yes. Of course.” He hesitates. “Do you… want to come inside?”

“No, I just came to drop that off,” she says, but she makes no move to leave.

She crosses her arms and regards him carefully. He’s almost a head taller than her, but somehow she manages to make him feel like a ten year old kid just by looking at him.

“You need to get over your issues with werewolves,” she says finally.

“I don’t-“

“Yes you do. I’ve seen the way you look at him. And don’t think he hasn’t noticed either. He’s pretending he doesn’t care because he’s “used to it”, as if that’s the kind of shit you get used to-“ she cuts herself off. “Anyway. I hope this is educational for you, Malfoy. Morally. Seems like your education’s been lacking a bit in that department, even if you are _decent_ at potions.”

He clenches his jaw. Takes a breath to keep himself from saying the first thing that comes to mind, the second one too.

“Yes,” he says. “I hope so too.”

She grimaces and turns back to the door, and Draco is genuinely looking very much forward to this conversation being over, but the weight of the bag is making the strap dig into his shoulder, and he knows he has to ask, because this is something that’s has been bothering him ever since they decided to give him this task.

“You know this is too much, right?” he says.

She stops. Turns back around with her hand still on the door handle.

“What?”

“The amount you want me to brew. It’s way too much for one person. The potency expires after-“

“I know,” she says. “It’s not just for him.”

He doesn’t want to look shocked, but the way she glares at him, he probably did.

“I didn’t know,” he starts, “I mean, are there…”

“Are there other werewolves in the Order? No. Not at the moment. But with Greyback on the loose, Remus isn’t the only one who needs it.”

She turns to head back out, but hesitates once more.

“You know we’re not just fighting You-Know-Who, right?” she says. “We’re not trying to kill him so things can go back to the way they were. When we win this war, things are going to change. I hope you understand that.”

-

The difficult part of brewing wolfsbane is not that it’s particularly labour-intensive. It requires precision and some pretty rare ingredients, but mostly it requires time to bubble quietly by itself until the moon is in the right position for it to be stirred once or twice, before it’s left alone again. This also means that while brewing the potion is certainly his most important job, most of his time is actually spent helping out around the house. And while Tonks might have been mocking him when she talked about his lack of education, it seems that most of his time at the Burrow is spent learning a myriad of things he never even knew he didn’t know. He learns how to peel potatoes and how to wash dishes. He learns how to make a bed and how to clean a bathroom. He learns what people look like when they’ve left their homes behind, when they’re worrying about a toy or a sweater they forgot to pack, because it’s easier than worrying about what comes next. He learns that there is a middle ground between needing to be the constant centre of attention and self-effacing, shame ridden invisibility, and he learns, slowly, how to fit himself into that space. But mostly he unlearns.

Draco fled the Death Eaters because he was afraid of the things he was being asked to do, and because he feared for his life. He may have been terrified by Voldemort’s methods, but he hadn’t spent much time doubting his cause. Not that he supported it either. He just went along. That makes the unlearning hard, because it is an unlearning of things he had not realized could be questioned. He gets to know the Weasleys. He likes them too. It’s been a while since he thought of them as incompetent, lower class blood traitors, but the idea that people can be ranked like that, by blood and wealth and status, still lingers. Weeks after joining the Order he still catches himself thinking, when they get bad news, “well, they were just muggles,” and then he feels like an imposter again, ashamed that they are letting him pass as one of them, even temporarily. He starts to wonder how long they will endure his presence, indulge his incompetence. 

But at least in one respect, he is no different from any of the other residents of the Burrow. While he knows the Order is doing important work, that they _are_ fighting back, even if only in small ways, it seems sometimes that most of what they do is pass back and forth reassurances that Harry is still alive. That Harry has not been caught, and so there is still hope. And Draco clings to that hope as desperately as any of them. He recognizes his worry in them, and he is pretty sure they recognize their worry in him. That bone-gnawing fear that never leaves, that wears down, that steals sleep and rots thought. The horror of _not knowing_ , of _never knowing_. Every person that walks through the door could be the one bringing the message that the worst has happened. That it happened days or even weeks ago.

Harry could already be dead and he would have no way of knowing.


	3. The Holidays

Winter comes slowly that year, with rain and sludge and snow that only stays on the ground for an hour before melting, leaving the landscape around Hogwarts a faded green-grey, the paths to the greenhouses muddy and slippery and the branches of the forest a line of ominous, black veins against the pale sky. Inside the castle, fireplaces roar in the common rooms and fail utterly to make them any less gloomy. There is tinsel on the staircase railings and a lingering smell of cinnamon and nutmeg in the Great Hall and all of it leaves Ginny feeling queasy and unsettled. There is nothing like walking the cursed path to the first Dark Arts lesson of the day accompanied by twinkling yuletide decorations to make you hate the holidays intensely.

“Sorry to leave you here with all this,” she tells Neville as the staircase shifts beneath them and they both clutch the railings for balance.

“Yeah well, someone’s got to stay and lead the army,” he says with a wry smile, and she loves him so much in that moment.

He is like Luna in the way he seems so soft, and then right underneath that there is this infinite, unbreakable strength. At her core, Ginny is made of flint, and this year has sharpened her, brought the rough edges out. Neville has stayed soft, and she marvels at that softness. Too many mornings she wakes up and the day towers in front of her, all her limbs so impossibly heavy she thinks she can’t possibly carry herself through all the hours until she gets to sleep again. Then she thinks of the Carrows and of Snape and the terrified first years scuttling along the walls when they walk to class, until she is angry enough to get out of bed. And the anger is good, it is what keeps her going, but every day she spends not setting fire to all the things she hates, it feels like she is burning up herself instead. Which is why she needs Neville and Luna and their infinite patience. Neville, who always asks her how she slept, who never snaps at anyone no matter how dark the circles under his eyes. Luna, who manages to find Ginny every morning in the throng of students leaving the Hall to grab her hand or brush a quick kiss against her cheek.

Neville waves goodbye to them at the station when the Hogwarts Express departs.

At King’s Cross, Luna hugs her for so long, Ginny thinks their respective parents should probably just go home without them and leave them there to become part of the architecture. She wouldn’t mind much being a column, she decides. But eventually, her mum clears her throat and she is suddenly overwhelmingly aware of being watched, so she lets go.

“See you in two weeks,” she says, and tries to make it sound brighter than she feels.

-

She doesn’t know what she expected. She didn’t actually think being home would allow her to slip into her old self, but she thought it would be easier to pretend. Her mum keeps asking what’s wrong, and Ginny keeps saying “nothing”, knowing that it is completely unconvincing. Going home means she gets to catch up on everything the Order has been up to, but that courtesy doesn’t go the other way. She knows her mum would ask her to shut down Dumbledore’s Army if she knew, and her dad would back her up. They like to imagine she is safe at Hogwarts. She does tell Fred and George, though. They understand. She is introduced to a new array of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, and decides the portable swamp definitely has potential.

Bill and Charlie aren’t coming home for Christmas, but she didn’t really expect them to. No one mentions Percy. There are no reports from Ron or Harry. It is what it is.

But then there is also the problem of Malfoy. Who apparently just lives there now. Who knows where things go in the kitchen, and when the chickens need to be fed, and has in-jokes with her brothers. He is so different than he was during the summer. Not as pale, not as jumpy. It makes her too aware of herself. She isn’t skittish, but she is tense. She doesn’t sleep well. She is still angry. And it is all just so monumentally unfair – that she has to spend her year stuck at Hogwarts, where she doesn’t get to see her family, where she has no idea what goes on outside the castle walls, where she has to pretend she knows what she is doing, where there’s _no one_ she can ask for help, where it’s all her responsibility – and he gets to be here.

Order members come and go in the house even during the holidays. Back during the summer, Malfoy wouldn’t quite look anyone in the eye. Now she seems to be the only one he can’t face, and he isn’t subtle about avoiding her. Whenever she comes into a room, he is always on his way out. And it’s not like _she_ wants to be around _him_ either, but it’s annoying anyway.

“He’s terrified of you,” George says, like he thinks it’s funny.

“Yes, but he doesn’t have to be _ridiculous_ about it. What does he think I’m going to do to him?”

The twins exchange a look.

“Bat bogey hex?” says Fred.

“Horn tongue hex?” says George.

“Knee reversal hex?”

“Good old-fashioned punch in the face?”

She grimaces.

“Well, it’s not like it isn’t _tempting_ ,” she says, and they both laugh.

“Just ignore him, Gin,” says George, clapping a hand on her shoulder.

“Yeah, trust me, you get used to him,” Fred adds.

So, for a couple of days, she tries to do that. They pass each other like ghosts. He never addresses her, she never addresses him. If he asks for something at dinner, she leaves it to someone else to pass it to him. 

And then one evening she comes downstairs to get a glass of water from the kitchen and he’s there. Doing dishes. Fucking _humming_ to himself. The humming stops as soon as he hears her footsteps. He glances up at her, then back down quickly. She opens the cupboard next to him, gets out a mug.

“Do you mind?” she says, and he silently steps out of her way so she can fill it under the tap.

She should just go back upstairs, but it’s been three days and she definitely hasn’t gotten used to him. She was looking forward to going home, to getting a chance to relax, and he has robbed her of that. So fuck it, she isn’t going to let him relax either. She leans against the dining table, takes a sip of her water, and feels the irritation stirring in her gut as she watches his skinny back, his raised shoulders, his rolled-up sleeves and the careful, slow way he picks up a glass and dips it into the soapy water.

“You can look at me,” she says. “I’m not a basilisk.”

He puts down the sponge and turns around to face her.

“Do you want something?”

Just the way he talks irks her. She shrugs.

“Heard anything from Harry?” she asks.

There’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“No,” he says. “No one has.”

He turns back to the sink, picks up another glass.

“I know what was going on with you and him,” she says.

He starts. The glass slips from his hand, clatters against the dishes in the sink and water splashes over the counter.

“What?” he says, voice high and thin.

She feels her chest tightening. She wasn’t actually sure about it. She had kind of hoped she was just being paranoid, but… well. At least he is looking at her now, eyes wide and lips pressed close together. He is watching her hands like he thinks she might actually try to fight him.

“Harry doesn’t really do subtle,” she says, managing to sound much calmer than she feels.

“What did he tell you?”

She tightens her grip around the mug.

“Harry didn’t tell me shit,” she says.

“Do you want me to apologize?”

She shrugs. She has no idea what she wants. Her throat feels tight. He grimaces.

“Look, we don’t have to do this,” he says. “It’s not going to be an issue.”

“You don’t get to decide whether or not it’s an issue,” she snaps and he flinches. She takes a deep breath. “I can’t fucking believe he would-“

“He really cares about you,” Malfoy says, and somehow he makes it sound defensive. Almost accusatory.

“I know,” she bites out. “That’s not the _point_.”

“Yes, it is,” he says. “If you’re worried that I would… steal him from you or something just… don’t. It’s not going to happen.”

His expression is shuttered, but there’s a bitter twist to his mouth when he says it. He’s looking past her, directing his words at the wall behind her instead. For a second she almost feels sorry for him. For a second she almost feels guilty.

“I just don’t get it,” she says. “How did you two even-”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, and then before she can protest: “He’s obviously still in love with you. It was never when you were… you weren’t together. When it happened.”

Right. Because Harry had broken up with her.

“I just don’t get why he would...”

 _Why he would want you_ , she doesn’t say. Malfoy snorts, like maybe he heard it anyway.

“Yeah, neither do I. I guess I was just… there. I suppose he wanted to – I don’t even know. Get away from himself. Do something stupid. I wouldn’t worry, if I were you. When all this is over, obviously, you guys will…” he gestures vaguely.

He’s still not looking at her, and she’s suddenly glad for it. She doesn’t feel entirely solid. Her grip on her mug feels tenuous. She doesn’t realize she’s going to say it aloud until the words are already out of her mouth.

“I don’t think Harry and I will get back together.”

He doesn’t say anything. The words just hang there, and she can feel hysterical laughter bubbling up in her chest. She has been trying to push that thought back for so long, because she doesn’t want to deal with it. How did she end up where _Malfoy_ was the first person she said it to?

“Why not?” Malfoy says and she flinches at his tone, how he’s slipping into accusatory again, which is ridiculous.

“Why do you care?” she snaps.

“I thought-“

“I don’t care what you think.” She puts her mug down on the table a little too hard. She is suddenly so done with this conversation. “You of all people do not get to give me shit about it.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he says.

But he obviously was. And god, it’s so unfair. Her anger feels directionless, impotent.

She hates Malfoy, obviously, hates his stupid, ferrety face, and she _is_ jealous of him, but not because of whatever dumb shit Harry has been doing with him. She’s jealous because Malfoy is still in love with him, and she isn’t.

She can feel the urge to say something stupid – something like “don’t hurt him”. Which would be pointless. She didn't miss the bitterness in Malfoy's voice, and she is all too familiar with Harry's well-meaning carelessness. She knows that, whatever is going on between them, the one who is most likely to end up hurt is Malfoy.

And if anyone is going to hurt Harry, it will be her.


	4. Pirate radio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I changed my mind about chapter divisions again, so chapter 4 has been split into two, the way I had originally planned them - the second half of this chapter (Ginny's pov) is now chapter 5. Sorry if this causes any confusion._

Christmas comes and goes, and Draco survives two weeks of living under the same roof as Ginny Weasley. Celebrating the holidays with the Weasleys is surprisingly painless and not nearly as awkward as he had feared. He misses his mum a lot though, misses the Manor like he hasn’t since he first came here. He accidentally lets this slip when Mrs Weasley asks him how he is doing, and she gives him a long, firm hug, that leaves him with a lump in his throat and too embarrassed to look at anyone for a while after.

In January, Lee Jordan starts frequenting the Burrow. Draco isn’t sure if he is there on Order business or if it’s just social calls, but there seems to be a thin line between the two for most Order members anyway. Draco doesn’t talk to him. He nods politely when he passes him around the house. Lee doesn’t try to start conversation either. It’s not like they would have anything to talk about. At Hogwarts, Draco really mostly knew him as a disembodied voice providing the most biased quidditch commentary in the history of school sports.

When February rolls around, winter weather still going strong with not a hint of mildness or spring in the air, Lee’s visits become more frequent. He stops by several times a week at all hours of the day, and every time Fred and George immediately emerge to usher him to their room, and then none of them are seen for hours. And okay, Draco is starting to get a little curious. Which is why, when he hears their voices coming from the living room instead of muffled behind Fred and George’s bedroom door, when he picks up the word _Potter_ in their rapid-fire conversation, he abandons his usual strategy of ignoring everything he hasn’t been explicitly invited to, and steps into the room.

The three of them are huddled around the coffee table, and to his surprise Mr Weasley is with them too, looking over the notes they have spread out on the table between them. He’s the only one facing the door, and he looks up when Draco steps inside.

“Hello, Draco,” he says, interrupting one of the twins mid-monologue. “Something you need?”

The other three turn around in their seats to look at him. No one is scrambling to gather up the papers or hide them out of sight, so that’s a good sign at least.

“No, sorry, I just thought I heard… Are there news of Potter?”

“No,” Mr Weasley says, and Draco tries not to look disappointed. From the sympathetic expression on Mr Weasley’s face he isn’t doing too well.

He knows it’s stupid. No one has heard anything in months, but he still feels that spike of thin-strung hope in his chest every time.

“The boys were just telling me about their plans for a pirate radio station for the Order,” Mr Weasley says.

“Potterwatch,” Lee adds. “That’s our working title, anyway. And it’s not just for the Order, it’s for everyone, you know? All the dissenters out there. All the regular media is useless now, but we need to keep people informed, keep morale up.”

“Cut down on owl post too,” Fred adds. “There’s too much that’s too risky to put in writing.”

Lee is grinning excitedly. Fred’s eyes are gleaming.

“They were just explaining the plan to me,” Mr Weasley says.

“You don’t think the Ministry will catch on to that pretty quickly?” Draco asks.

“We’ll change the frequency every broadcast,” says George.

“And we’re trying to figure out a password system,” adds Lee.

“Are you going to record it here?”

Fred shrugs.

“We’re still working out the details. We might have to move around a bit, but we’ll start out at Lee’s flat. He’s already got all the equipment set up.”

The room is practically vibrating with their excitement, and Draco isn’t part of it, but it’s still contagious. The idea of reaching out, connecting their makeshift resistance movement to other people out there. The idea that Harry might hear it.

“Can I help?”

-

Draco rarely goes on missions away from headquarters. When he does he is always polyjuiced, always accompanied by older, more trusted Order members. He helps set up new safehouses, delivers wolfsbane to the back doors of dark, shuttered houses. It mostly goes well, but there are a couple of close calls, and Draco isn’t very good under pressure. Ever since the Dark Lord took the Ministry they are more likely to meet aurors than inner circle death eaters, but he is still terrified of running into his father.

They set up a tip-line for the pirate radio, and gradually, manning it becomes Draco’s main job. It’s mostly bullshit. The number of people telling him they’ve seen the Dark Lord skulking around their back yard is ridiculous. But it’s something to do, and occasionally there is useful information too. About people on the run and in hiding. People who have disappeared or been killed. It’s something to do.

They do go with Potterwatch, for the radio station, though it’s more than a bit misleading. No one has heard from Harry in months. They might not hear anything in the months to come either, but Draco tries not to think about that. He tries not to think beyond the next week, the next broadcast, the next batch of polyjuice or wolfsbane brewing in the attic. If he does, it’s too easy to start thinking of years too. His residence at the Burrow already feels permanent. In the beginning, he must have imagined this was just going to be a brief period in his life; he doesn’t remember even questioning that there would be an end to this war within a reasonable amount of time. Now there doesn’t really seem to be an end in sight. There is just Harry. And Draco’s hope for him is starting to fray.

They don’t hear anything from Ginny either. She hasn’t sent a single letter home since she returned to school, and Mrs Weasley is slowly unravelling in the silence.


	5. The returned and the missing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I changed my mind about chapter divisions again, so I split chapter 4 into two, the way I had originally planned them - so this is just the second half of chapter 4 reuploaded. Sorry if this causes any confusion._

The path from the platform is slippery with muddy snow and sludge and they all tread carefully as they make their way to the carriages. Ginny wraps her winter cloak closer around her and looks up at the looming castle ahead. Parvati joins her and Neville while they wait for a carriage, her breath visible in the freezing air.

“Have you seen Luna?” she asks.

Ginny shakes her head.

“I thought she maybe sat with the Ravenclaws?” she says, which is half a lie already. Of course Luna would have found her and Neville in their compartment. She looked for her at King’s Cross too and didn’t see her.

“Maybe she missed the train,” says Neville quietly.

Ginny tries to squash the sick, twisting feeling in her gut, and she nods.

“Yeah, maybe.”

-

A month after their return, there’s a new issue of the Quibbler. An owl lands by Ginny’s plate with her copy of the rolled up magazine. She unfolds it and stares down at Harry’s face plastered across the cover above the words _Undesirable No. 1_. Neville sees her face and reaches for the magazine, and she passes it silently. His face twists and she doesn’t want to hear him say it, she doesn’t want to hear him say anything. She stares at the toast in front of her and she is abruptly not hungry anymore. She hears Neville’s intake of breath too loudly, and all she can think is _shut up shut up_ , but when he speaks it isn’t to voice any of the awful conclusions she has already come to herself. Instead he looks past her and says briskly:

“What’s up, Colin?”

She turns around to see the tiny Creevey kid standing behind her, face pale and eyes shifting nervously.

“It’s Dennis,” he says quietly. “He… they… he just came back from Dark Arts.”

Despite everything, it actually takes Ginny a moment to catch on. And for a second she is tempted to tell Colin to go find McGonagall. Or a prefect. Tell him that this is not her problem. Except it is, because he came to her, and she knows why, and she has to deal with it. So she gets up, feeling like her body isn’t hers.

“Where is he?” she asks.

“I can go,” Neville says, already standing up as well.

“It’s fine,” she says sharply. “Just stay here.”

He doesn’t fight her on it, and she pretends like she doesn’t notice his reluctance when he sits back down. She follows Colin Creevey to the Gryffindor common room where his even tinier brother is huddled in a chair with three blankets around him and still shaking like he’s freezing to death.

Ginny isn’t very good at being comforting. He should have fetched Luna instead, she thinks absently, and then feels like she has been stabbed all over again. She pats his shoulder and tries to imagine what her mum would say.

“Stay with him, alright?” she tells Colin.

He hesitates.

“I have transfiguration now,” he says.

“It’s fine, McGonagall won’t punish you for skipping.”

“But if the Carrows-“

“It’s fine,” Ginny says, her voice too sharp and he flinches. She takes a breath, tries to remember how to sound calm and adult and responsible. “McGonagall’s alright, she’ll cover for you.”

He nods resolutely. She squeezes his shoulder and forces her face into a smile.

-

Ginny leaves the Creevey kids in the common room. When she is halfway to charms she steps onto a wrong staircase and it shifts, depositing her on the wrong landing, meaning she’ll have to take the long way and she's going to be late. She's just trying to remember if there’s a secret passage that will get her there faster, when everything slams back into her like a wave, the numbness knocked out of her and she's shaking.

She doesn’t remember getting to the bathroom. Just the slam of the stall door behind her, twisting the lock so hard it feels like it might snap. She collapses onto the toilet seat and drags in long, thin breaths, and it’s like there isn’t enough air in the room, like she’s choking, each breath goes through her chest like a serrated knife. And then she’s sobbing. Her hiccupping gasps echo against the tiled walls and she feels like she's shaking apart.

She cries like she hasn’t cried in years. Like she hasn’t since she was 11 and was losing time and there was no one she could ask for help. It’s the same crushing feeling crashing through her now. Like sitting at the bottom of a well, the whole world towering above, trapping her between its walls as her body locks up and stops being hers while her heart hammers painfully and her fingers won’t stop trembling. She presses her arms against her stomach, feels it rise and fall in jerks as the sobs wreck through her, eyes squeezed shut, face pressed into her knees.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed when it stops, but it does eventually. Her breathing has slowed. She can hear a quiet trickle of water from a leaking sink outside her stall. The skin around her eyes aches. She grabs some toilet paper to wipe the tears and snot off her face, then slowly gets to her feet. She feels wrung out and so, so tired.

She unlocks the door to the stall and she’s too tired to even flinch when she finds Neville waiting outside.

“Hey,” he says.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice is wrecked. She probably looks like shit.

“Stella said she heard you up here.”

Ginny has no idea who Stella is.

“One of the little ones,” Neville says. “Hufflepuff, the one with the braids?”

“Shit,” she mutters.

“It’s fine.”

“You should get out of here. It’s a girl’s bathroom, you know they’re just looking for an excuse to give you another detention.”

He sighs.

“It’s fine.”

She steps past him.

“Just… let’s go,” she says.

He grabs her arm and she stops, glares back at him.

“Come on,” he says quietly, and she still feels like her body has been wrung like a washcloth, so she doesn’t fight him when he pulls her into a hug.

In her head, he’s still smaller than her. She keeps forgetting how much he has grown, but standing like this, with his arms around her and his chin resting on her hair, she feels like a little kid. She didn’t think she had any more tears in her, but there is a prickle at the corners of her eyes. It's normal crying this time though, the quiet kind.

“They tortured Dennis Creevey,” she says into his shirt.

“I know. Seamus went to check on him just now.”

Her throat is tight and she swallows hard.

“They’ve got Luna,” she says.

“I know.”

-

They trash the Dark Arts classroom. Neville takes a small group of volunteers from the D.A., sixth and seventh years only, and they burn everything that will burn, smash everything that won’t and leave behind three-foot-high letters spelling out _Dumbledore’s Army still recruiting_ down the corridor outside.

Ginny doesn’t go. That’s the rule now, one of them has to stay behind in case the other gets caught. But she stops by to get a look at the glorious wreckage the day after. The graffiti is gone already, of course, but she can still see remnants of the paint on the stone walls.

-

The next mission is hers. She goes over the list three times with the D.A., making sure they have every single name. It takes half the night, four of them working in total silence, listening all the while for any hint of footsteps and looking out for the flickering light of Filch’s lantern. By the time they’re done, every wall in the Entry Hall is covered with the same names over and over again, a repeating list of every student who has disappeared.

Ginny only gets two hours of sleep and the graffiti is gone before dinner, but it’s worth it just for the murderous look on Snape’s face at breakfast.


	6. Potterwatch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I changed my mind about chapter divisions, so I've split chapter 4 into two parts, the way I had originally done it - so chapter 5 is just the second half of chapter 4 (Ginny's pov) reuploaded. Sorry for any confusion._

Searching for Horcruxes is slow and excruciating, except for when it isn’t. There are too many close calls. Harry thinks he has figured out the secret of the Hallows, but they almost got caught after they went to see Xenophilius Lovegood, and he wishes they had more than a half-solved riddle to show for their troubles.

The locket is gone now, but sometimes it feels like they’re still carrying it. Ron has left and come back, and Harry is so glad to have him, but things are still tense. Hermione gets that tight curl in her shoulders whenever he speaks, and it doesn’t help that he keeps trying to apologize. Every night he huddles by their small radio, tapping it with his wand and muttering under his breath, and he keeps glancing her way, like he’s waiting for her to snap or maybe like he wants to have another go at explaining how great the broadcast is, or how he is bound to guess the password eventually.

Harry is keeping watch outside the tent, even though it probably isn’t necessary. They have set up all the usual wards, they are invisible to any passers-by, and anyway the wards will alert them if anyone passes within five hundred feet of their camp. Still, he stays outside and watches the darkness creeping in between the trees. It’s march, but there’s still snow on the ground and he can’t quite feel his toes.

Then the tent-flap is pushed open behind him and he turns around to see Ron sticking his head out with a wide grin on his face.

“I’ve got it!” he says. “Password was ‘Albus’! Get in here, Harry!”

Harry scrambles to his feet and hurries inside, more a reaction to Ron’s excitement than his own; he doesn’t know what to expect or even why this is so important. At least it’s warmer inside the tent, and he sits down next to them. Hermione is already seated on Ron’s other side, shoulder pressed against his as she leans towards the radio, and Harry isn’t sure whether Ron is more excited about that or the broadcast.

“Okay, just listen,” Ron says, turning up the volume.

“We will if you shut up!” Hermione says, but there isn’t any bite to it.

And then, from the tiny little speaker comes a chipper, familiar voice.

“…apologize for our temporary absence from the airwaves, which was due to a number of house calls in our area by those charming Death Eaters,” says Lee Jordan, and Harry’s heart rate picks up.

“We have now found ourselves another secure location,” Lee says, “and I’m pleased to tell you that two of our regular contributors have joined me here this evening. Evening, boys!”

“Hi.”

“Evening, River.”

“River, that’s Lee,” Ron explains. “They’ve all got code names, but you can usually tell-”

“Shh!” Hermione says.

And Ron falls quiet as the three of them listen, as the radio goes on and for the first time in months they get actual news from the outside world, about what is happening everywhere else, to everyone else. Harry feels a sick swoop in his belly when Lee informs them of the murder of Ted Tonks. The three of them share worried glances as Dean Thomas is mentioned to be on the run. There is a lot of bad news. There is also, in Harry’s chest, a yearning to reach out and climb into the radio, into that space of sound, of friends and familiar names and a sense that he is not entirely alone. There is a sense that for the first time in months, they have a connection to the outside world. For the first time in forever, they are not completely isolated. And from the way they are all leaning in, listening with the same raptured excitement, he knows Ron and Hermione feel it too.

The minutes pass and the tent fills with one familiar voice after another – with each new code name, Ron starts to explain who it is, and Hermione shushes him, and Harry doesn’t say a word, he just listens, heart surging in his chest.

-

“We continue to hear truly inspirational stories of wizards and witches risking their own safety to protect Muggle friends and neighbours, often without the Muggles’ knowledge,” says Kinglsey. “I’d like to appeal to all our listeners to emulate their example, perhaps by casting a protective charm over any Muggle dwellings in your street. Many lives could be saved if such simple measures are taken.”

-

“Romulus, do you maintain, as you have every time you’ve appeared on our program, that Harry Potter is still alive?”

“I do,” says Lupin. “There is no doubt at all in my mind that his death would be proclaimed as widely as possible by the Death Eaters if it had happened, because it would strike a deadly blow at the morale of those resisting the new regime. ‘The Boy Who Lived’ remains a symbol of everything for which we are fighting: the triumph of good, the power of innocence, the need to keep resisting.”

-

“As our listeners will know,” says Fred or maybe George, “unless they’ve taken refuge at the bottom of a garden pond or somewhere similar, You-Know-Who’s strategy of remaining in the shadows is creating a nice little climate of panic. Mind you, if all the alleged sightings of him are genuine, we must have a good nineteen You-Know-Whos running around the place.”

-

Harry doesn’t know how much time passes. It feels like a small eternity, but it also seems way too soon when Lee says:

“And now, listeners, we are nearing the end of our broadcast. However, since we are enjoying our newly secure location, we have extended tonight’s show a bit to welcome a new voice onto the program. Peacock, it’s good to have you.”

“I told you, I’m not going by _peacock_ ,” says a slightly muffled, posh and painfully familiar voice.

Harry’s heart stutters in his chest.

“Is that _Malfoy_?” Hermione says.

“Can’t be,” Ron mutters, turning up the volume.

“Shut up and get in front of the mic,” says Lee cheerfully. “Now, Peacock has been a longtime supporter of Potterwatch and he might be familiar to some of you since he has been manning our tip line. Peacock is an active member of the resistance, but that is actually a fairly recent development.”

“Yes,” says Malfoy, his voice coming through clearly now, and there is no doubt that it is him.

Harry’s hands are shaking. He has been exchanging glances with Ron and Hermione all through the program, grinning at them with each new voice, but now he keeps his eyes fixed on the little light-up panel. He can’t look at them. He has no idea what his face is doing, but he knows he can’t mirror whatever angry disbelief they must be wearing.

“Wasn’t he supposed to leave for France?” Hermione asks, and Harry wants to shush her, but he keeps quiet.

“…to have you. Now we discussed this beforehand and I’m glad you decided to share this with our listeners, because I think it is important for all of you out there to hear. Peacock, tell us, what were you doing before you joined the resistance?”

There’s a moment of quiet, the radio static crackling and then Malfoy’s voice quietly and carefully:

“I was a Death Eater.”

“Holy shit,” Ron breathes.

“You heard that right, everyone – we have a deserter on our hands.”

**-**

“What the actual fuck,” says Seamus, eyes wide with disbelief, and his voice is only one in the cacophony that breaks out all around the room.

Almost all of Dumbledore’s Army are in the Room of Requirement, huddled around the radio with blankets and pillows and tea as they are for every broadcast. And Potterwatch-time is sacred – no matter the news, people keep their reactions to gasps, to quiet looks, to notetaking, in the case of some of the Ravenclaws, but no one talks. Everyone is listening for their own reason – listening for the names of friends or family members on the run, for positive developments to cling to, or simply because, like Ginny, they need this like they need air, need this one uncensored source of information about what the hell is going on out there.

Now, however, the sanctity is broken and people are talking loudly, angry discussions rising in volume, drowning out whatever explanation Lee is giving for putting Malfoy of all people on the air. Ginny is about to tell them to shut up, but Neville gets there before her.

“Everybody quiet!” he calls out, voice loud and clear and not even angry. “We discuss _after_ the broadcast – if you need to talk, go somewhere else, that’s the rule.”

And it works like it does every time. They shut up. They settle down.

“…forgiveness. That’s not the point of me being here,” Malfoy’s nervous voice finishes.

Ginny can feel Neville staring at her. When she looks his way, he raises an eyebrow– _did you know_? She shakes her head.

“Later,” she whispers.

“Well put,” Lee says. “We know putting you on the air – and revealing your past affiliations – is putting our listeners in an uncomfortable position, but to all of you out there, I ask you to stay tuned a little longer. As Peacock said, this is not a question of forgiveness; it’s a unique opportunity to look at what’s going on on the inside behind enemy lines. Now, Peacock, what is the most important thing for our listeners to know?”

They can hear Malfoy clear his throat.

“Rapier already touched on how fear is one of You-Know-Who’s primary tactics,” he says, “but I want to remind everyone that that fear is not just targeted at all the ones fighting back, it is also the main way he keeps his followers in check.”

It sounds stiff, a bit too rehearsed. It’s a far cry from the confident, passionate reassurances of Kingsley and Lupin. Ginny can just imagine him in Lee’s makeshift studio, sitting tense and coiled in front of his mic. He probably has notes, and he still doesn’t manage to keep the tremor entirely out of his voice.

“The Death Eaters want to seem like they’re the unconquerable majority, like they already have most people on their side,” he continues, “but there’s only a handful of them that are actually, truly and honestly fighting on You-Know-Who’s side. The rest are simply too scared to back out. Most of the Death Eaters’ handholds in the Ministry are completely dependent on the imperious curse. They might seem like they’re a united front, but they’re not. Half of them would desert in a heartbeat if they weren’t all cowards.”

Maybe it’s better that he sounds nervous; it helps take the edge off his pompous voice. That might make people hate him less which, she realizes, she actually hopes it does. Not just because she would hate the post-Potterwatch joy to be shattered by something as stupid as this brief Malfoy-segment, but because… well, Malfoy may be a lot of things, but he really isn’t a Death Eater. There is a specific hatred reserved for Death Eaters, it simmers in her and in everyone in this room. It is violent and it is overwhelming, and it is reserved for people like the Carrows, who deserve to die slow, painful deaths in Azkaban. And she might have a lot of complicated feelings about Draco Malfoy, but that hatred isn’t for him.

“And what do you think this means for the resistance?” Lee asks.

“It means,” Malfoy says, “that when Harry Potter kills You-Know-Who, the fight will be over. The Death Eaters will fall apart and scatter and all we have to do then is pick up the pieces. But the war ends when You-Know-Who dies.”

“I notice you say ‘when’, not ‘if’ – I assume that means you’re also convinced that Harry Potter is going to defeat him?”

There’s a short pause, and Ginny can feel the people around her leaning in. She might be too, in spite of herself. They asked Lupin the same thing. They always make someone say it, every single broadcast. It doesn’t matter. She never gets tired of hearing it. When Malfoy speaks, his voice is quieter, but more certain than before:

“Yes,” he says. “I trust him. And I want to do everything I can to help him do it.”

**-**

Draco leans back in his chair, making sure he is as far away from the microphone as possible before letting out a shuddering exhalation. He presses his hands to his burning face, curling in on himself and tries to keep his panicked breathing quiet. His heart is pounding as if he just ran a marathon. His fingertips are buzzing. Distantly, he hears Lee finishing up.

“Listeners, that brings us to the end of another Potterwatch,” he says. “We don’t know when it will be possible to broadcast again, but you can be sure we shall be back. Keep twiddling those dials: The next password will be ‘Mad-Eye.’ Keep each other safe: Keep faith. Good night.”

There’s a click as he switches his microphone off. His chair creaks.

“Feels good to be back at it,” he says breezily. “You doing alright there, Draco?”

Draco looks up at him. He feels pretty far from alright, actually.

“This was a terrible idea,” he says quietly.

“You did a good job,” Lupin says.

Draco shakes his head.

“No one wants to hear from a Death Eater. No one is going to feel _cheered up_ by that.”

“No, I agree with Remus,” says Kingsley, getting to his feet. “I think it lends credibility, hearing a voice from the inside. And if nothing else, it’s important that people know there _are_ deserters among the Death Eaters.”

“Yeah, cheer up, Draco,” says Fred with a grin.

“You might want to let someone else manage the tip line for a while, though, Lee,” says Lupin. “It would be stupid to think that no one is going to be angry. You will probably get a bit of hate-mail after this.”

**-**

The broadcast ends, the familiar voices replaced by empty static. Ron switches the radio off and grins at them.

“It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Hermione says, and it’s been a long time since Harry has seen her smiling like that, or smiling at all. “It was great.”

“I need some air,” Harry mutters, his chair clattering behind him, almost tipping over when he stands up.

The others look up at him, Ron’s mouth is already opening on a question. Harry turns and walks out before he can get to it, pushing the tent flap aside and stepping into the cold night air.

The forest is so dark now he can barely make out the closest trees. He breathes in deeply, as if that’s going to untangle the tight knot in his chest. It’s quiet out here. He tries to sort through his thoughts. The excitement is still there, the joy of hearing from everyone. It felt like he had almost forgotten their voices. He just… hadn’t expected Draco.

He is happy he stayed, he _wanted_ him to stay, it’s just… in his head, Draco is still separate from everyone else. He doesn’t know what to make of this, of knowing that he was in the same room as Lee and George and Lupin and Kingsley. _I trust him_ , he had said. What does that even mean? What the hell is Harry supposed to make of that?

It’s not long before there’s shuffling footsteps behind him.

“Hey,” Ron says. “You alright?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I just… needed some air.”

Ron takes up the spot next to him, Harry can see him out of the corner of his eye, slouching with his hands jammed deep into his pockets.

“The broadcast was great,” Harry says.

“You think so?”

Harry nods.

“Sometimes it’s easy to forget we aren’t the only ones fighting.”

“Yeah,” says Ron quietly. “So what’s wrong, then?”

Harry shrugs. He’s not even sure himself. He is happy. Hearing everyone’s voices was like waking from a long sleep. Which is what he should tell Ron. He should have stayed in the tent with them, pretended this didn’t bother him.

“I can’t believe he stayed,” he says.

“What, Malfoy?” Ron shrugs. “I don’t think any of us saw that coming. Bill didn’t even tell me he had joined the Order… But I wouldn’t worry about it, Harry, if the others think they can trust him-“

“He told me he was staying.”

“Wait, really?”

Harry folds his arms tight across his chest.

“Back at the Burrow. Before we left. I didn’t believe him.”

“Who would have?” Ron says with a shrug. “It’s not like he’s been much for bravery or, you know, fighting Death Eaters before.”

“Well, he is now,” says Harry sharply, then flinches at the harshness in his voice.

“Oh,” says Ron, understanding dawning in his voice. “Is this about that thing with you two back in summer?”

“What thing?” Harry snaps, whirling around to stare at him.

Ron looks a little taken aback.

“Just… you know,” he gestures vaguely, “you two were both acting really weird when we were at my house? I mean, I know you hate him, but for a bit there it seemed like you were almost, I don’t know, scared of him? I figured something was up, but you didn’t seem like you’d want to talk about it.”

Harry exhales. For a second he thought Ron knew, but there is nothing accusatory in his voice. If Harry told him he still doesn’t want to talk about it, he would probably just drop it.

And somehow that makes Harry want to tell him. All of it, the two years’ worth of secrets he has been holding in a stranglehold in his chest, the whole messed up story. He wants to take him through all of it, the fights at the Burrow, the sectumsempra, the bullshit back in fifth year, all the times Draco dragged him into an empty classroom, all the times Harry let him. How much he hated him for it, and how he stopped hating him. He wants to tell Ron about the look on Draco’s face that last night they talked. But he can’t.

Because every turn of this story is also the story of Harry betraying Ginny.

Ron is his best friend, and Harry knows that is not an easy thing to be, not just because of Ron’s jealousy but because being friends with Harry has meant Ron putting himself in danger, risking his life again and again and again, never hesitating or asking questions or wanting out, and maybe that means Harry owes him the truth by now, but he is pretty sure that would mean losing him for good.

Because while Harry knows with absolute certainty that Ron would happily put himself in the way of every single Death Eater for his sake, he isn’t sure he would stick with him through the uncovering of this secret. And he can’t risk it. He just got him back. If he left again, that would be the end.

“I don’t hate him,” Harry says.

Ron waits, but when Harry doesn’t elaborate, he just nods.

“Alright,” he says.

For a while they stare quietly into the darkness.

“You know,” Ron says, “you don’t have to tell me about it, whatever it is. But if you ever want to, I’m here.”

Harry nods.

“I know.”

“Good. And for what it’s worth, it didn’t sound like Malfoy hates you anymore either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This chapter contained quite a bit of dialogue that’s lifted directly from the books, I hope you’ll forgive me for that. This story is still kind of a remix of canon, so I felt it was justified, and I’ve always loved the Potterwatch scene, so I wanted to include it._


	7. The waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I haven't been responding to comments lately, because I'm currently drowning in some hellish exam papers, but I am still reading them and I am so grateful for every single one, you guys are amazing and it means so much to me that you like the story. I still want to reply to your comments individually once school is done sucking the life out of me, so this is just like a blanket thank you for now_

Draco’s refuge at the Weasley house was bound to end eventually, and it does. When it’s discovered that Ron is travelling with Harry, the Weasleys’ pureblood status is no longer enough to keep them safe. They abandon the Burrow as headquarters, Bill and Arthur leave their jobs at the Ministry and the whole family moves in with some aunt in a Fidelius-protected house.

It’s pure luck that the news break while Ginny is home for Easter break – and that she even came home. She didn’t want to, Draco gathered as much from Mrs Weasley’s angry tirades when Ginny finally started responding to their letters again.

She drags him aside while her family is packing up and tells him, in unnecessarily threatening terms, that if he hears anything about Harry, if he knows something is going to happen, he is to tell her immediately.

“Not Potterwatch stuff,” she says. “We’re going to have to fight back soon, actually fight, and it won’t be too long now. So when it happens, I need to know right away, you understand?”

“Is that why you wanted to stay at Hogwarts?” he asks.

She rolls her eyes.

“I wanted to stay at Hogwarts because shit is bad there and they need me,” she says. “And yeah. I think he might show up there eventually.”

“One of them probably will,” Draco says. “You-Know-Who’s as obsessed with Hogwarts as Harry is.”

Ginny scoffs.

“Probably. Either way, if one of them shows up, the other is bound to follow, right?”

“You want me to tell you if I hear something from the Order. Will you let me know if you hear anything from Hogwarts? I assume you have some way for them to contact you.”

She grimaces.

“I liked you better when you were a pushover, Malfoy,” she says.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well no, not really. Neville is gonna let me know if things start happening there, and I know a way into the castle.”

“I don’t expect you to wait for me, but if you could send me an owl before you go-“

“Yeah sure,” she cuts him off. “Whoever hears something first passes it on, deal?”

“Sounds good to me.”

She nods.

“I have to go pack up my shit.”

-

Draco doesn’t go with them. Instead, he moves in on the couch in the small, shabby flat that currently serves as the recording studio for Potterwatch. There’s a folding bed in there too, but it’s so old the springs are nearly poking through the mattress, and Lee claims it’s like sleeping on a bed of nails, so Draco sticks to the couch.

“You won’t get too lonely,” Lee Jordan says after letting him in. “Honestly, I spend more time here than at my own place at this point. There’s no floo, so the tipline is only owl and muggle post. If anything is addressed to you, don’t open it, they tend to either burn or smell quite aggressively.”

“Got it,” he says, dropping his bag on the couch. “Anything else I need to know?”

“Don’t go out without a disguise.”

“Obviously.”

Lee shrugs.

“Can’t be too careful, walking around with that face. Have you thought of dyeing your hair?”

“I’ve still got some polyjuice left.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll be back for the next broadcast, but I’ll make sure someone comes by before then when we hear from the Weasleys. You know, to let you know if they’re okay.”

Draco sits down next to his bag.

“Thanks, Lee.”

“No problem.”

Draco stays seated on the couch long after Lee has gone. He barely brought anything with him, so there isn’t much to unpack. He had to leave his potions equipment behind at the Burrow too, so there really isn’t anything left for him to do except wait.

So that’s what he’ll do. Twiddle his thumbs and pace in the tiny apartment, and wait for news.

-

Despite Lee’s promises, his irregular visits aren’t quite enough to stave off Draco’s loneliness, much less his boredom. The Order is even more scattered now that there is no official headquarters, and all communication carries a risk, so fewer Order tasks pass his way. The only reason he isn’t completely out of the loop is because of Potterwatch. And the broadcast is getting more sombre by the day. The dual purpose of the radio station is to keep people informed of what is actually happening and to keep up morale, but as the bad news pile up, it becomes harder and harder to do both. Lee is doing his best, but he too is starting to look worn out.

As the weeks pass, the promise Draco gave Ginny starts to seem ridiculous. Not just because the idea that he would ever hear anything before she does is becoming more and more unlikely, but because even the certainty that some kind of battle is forthcoming, that they are working towards some final stand-off, is fast taking on the shape of a childish fantasy. Why were they ever so certain that they would get a chance to get out and fight? As if Voldemort would ever allow something like that. Draco can feel the resistance slowly suffocating under the Death Eater regime, and at this point it’s starting to seem like all the Dark Lord has to do is wait them out.

Of course, there is Harry, who is supposedly still out there. Whose name is invoked on every broadcast, as if they still believe he has some secret power to vanquish Voldemort that the Order doesn’t. And as much as Draco wants to believe it too, he is finding it harder and harder to hold on to his conviction. It already seems a very long time ago that he spoke on the broadcast. Now the memories from summer keep encroaching on him and he remembers too vividly what Potter looked like the last time they spoke – like a seventeen-year-old who was in way over his head and was barely holding it together.

But then, being in over his head is probably just how Potter does things. Even if it seemed unintentional half the time, the git did always have a flair for the dramatic.

So Draco really shouldn’t be surprised when Lee practically kicks down the door to the flat one evening, completely outside the regular broadcasting schedule, and announces that Potter broke into Gringotts.

“He did what?” Draco asks, locking the door that Lee left open behind him.

“He broke into Gringotts! Escaped on a dragon too.”

“Are you serious?”

Lee grins at him.

“Dead serious. There were tons of witnesses. I don’t see how the Ministry plans to cover it up, but it doesn’t matter, we’re doing a special broadcast on it right now,” he says, and Draco scrambles over to help him set everything up.

-

The broadcast ends up being pretty short, even though Lee spins as much gold as he can on the few facts he actually has. Draco watches him from the couch and gets the added experience of Lee’s expansive gestures while he talks – he almost knocks over the microphone, illustrating the swoop of the dragon as it, apparently, broke through the roof of Gringotts and took to the sky, disappearing out of view beyond the clouds.

Draco almost interrupts to ask him how exactly they know that Potter was riding the dragon, how anyone could possibly have been close enough to verify it, but he stops himself. One appearance on Potterwatch was more than enough. Besides, it’s Potter they’re talking about. Of course he was riding the dragon.

When Lee has finally wrapped up, he stands and starts to put his jacket back on.

“Where are you going?” Draco asks, and Lee looks confused.

“Out? Or did you need me for something?”

“It’s past curfew now.”

Lee glances at the clock on the wall.

“Shit,” he mutters. “Guess I’m staying here then.”

“Do you need help with the folding bed?”

Lee shakes his head.

“I’m good. Do you have any tea, though?”

-

Draco sets the kettle boiling in the kitchen, pulls two mugs from the cupboard over the sink and listens to Lee’s quiet swearing as he fights the ancient folding bed in the other room.

And then there’s a knock on the door, which a second later turns to pounding, and in the next moment him and Lee are standing shoulder to shoulder in the living room, wands out, watching the door, when Ginny’s voice sounds from the other side:

“Malfoy, you little shit, you better be awake, I am not going to _fucking_ wait for you!”

They both lower their wands. Lee glances at him, Draco gives him a short nod and keeps his wand ready while Lee inches towards the door and carefully pulls it open.

Ginny, Fred and George stumble inside.

“Oh, hey, you’re here too!” says one of the twins grinning widely and throwing an arm around Lee, and Draco finally lowers his wand.

“What’s wrong?” he snaps.

Ginny glares at him with the sort of all-purpose denunciation he has gotten used to from her, like it’s somehow his fault that they’ve crashed the place in the middle of the night.

“Harry’s at Hogwarts,” she says.


	8. The battle

They apparate straight into the Hog’s Head and arrive to a sound of shattering glass that has Draco whirling around with his wand raised even before he has properly gotten his balance. Then he spots the old man who runs the place and the shattered cup at his feet.

“Merlin’s tits,” the man swears, “Longbottom said there’d be more of you, I didn’t think there’d be hordes crashing through the second he left.”

“Can you get us into the castle?” Ginny asks.

The man gestures to a large portrait on the wall, and Draco only gets a glimpse of the young girl it depicts before it swings open, revealing a dark passage behind it.

“Through there,” he says.

Ginny has just climbed into the passage when they hear another loud pop of apparition. He turns around to see Cho Chang standing in the inn, looking slightly out of breath.

“What are you doing here?” Lee asks.

Cho holds up a galleon, a wide grin on her face.

“I got the message!” she says.

Which makes no sense to Draco, so while Lee and the twins rush to greet her, he follows Ginny into the passage. Behind him he hears the innkeeper muttering something about this place being a bar not a railway station.

-

It’s probably not a long walk through the tunnel, nowhere near the actual distance from Hogsmeade to the castle, but it feels endless anyway. Draco is still clutching his wand, keeping his free hand on the wall as he follows Ginny’s lumos through the darkness with his heart in his throat, feeling every breath he takes, hearing every scrape of their footsteps. Lee, Cho and the twins were chattering behind him in the beginning, but even they have grown quiet.

Then, there’s a light at the end, voices coming towards them, and they stumble into a large room and a group of people whose heated conversation continues completely undisturbed by their ragtag group emerging. Draco recognizes the people closest to the door – Luna Lovegood and Dean Thomas. They’re the only ones not in school uniforms, and must have come through just before him and the Weasleys – Thomas has been on the run, he remembers Lee mentioning it on Potterwatch, and Draco is about to ask them if they know what the situation is, when Ginny shoves him out of the way and launches herself at Lovegood, almost knocking the skinny girl off her feet.

“You’re here! How- you’re actually here, how are you here?” she asks into Luna’s hair, her voice muffled and strangled with relief, but still so soft and fond Draco can barely even recognize it as hers, and suddenly there are some things regarding Ginny Weasley that start to make a little more sense.

Then Dean Thomas catches Draco’s eye, looking suspicious or annoyed, definitely not happy to see him, and Draco quickly turns away as he remembers this is not the Order of the Phoenix, and there is no chance asking a Gryffindor about anything is going to lead anywhere useful. He glances around the room. The kids in there are overwhelmingly Gryffindor, but there are Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs here and there, and as far as he can tell, not a single person from Slytherin. They must be inside the castle, but Draco is certain he has never been in this room before. There are hammocks strung up in one end with clothes and toiletries in bags or piles around them, bookshelves in another, a long dining table in the middle and – and he stops looking at the room, because standing not five feet away from him is Potter, with Granger and Weasley at his side. Draco’s heart does a funny thing in his chest, it suddenly hits him how long it has been since he last saw him, the reality that those months since summer passed for Potter too, and Draco didn’t know why he expected him to still look the same. He doesn’t. He is so skinny, his face is ragged, reminding Draco of the way he used to look when he came back from the holidays. His hair has grown long too, the dark curls nearly reaching his shoulders. His eyes are distant, brow furrowed, Draco is torn between wanting to run to him and wanting to hide, but it doesn’t matter either way, because Potter doesn’t quite seem to notice them – not Draco or Ginny or Cho, for that matter. He might have glanced their way when they came in, but now he has turned back to Longbottom and is continuing whatever argument it was the merry group of Potter’s exes stumbled into.

Longbottom has apparently won the discussion, because there’s a defeated slump to Harry’s shoulders when he finally turns to the assembled group and gives them a rundown of the vaguest plan Draco has ever heard: He is looking for something hidden in the castle. It might have belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw. It’s important, and he needs help finding it.

Before long Harry is leaving for Ravenclaw tower with Lovegood in tow, and the rest of them are left to deal with the anticlimactic uncertainty of what exactly is supposed to happen now.

And what is supposed to happen is, apparently, more waiting. There are loud protests from everyone when Longbottom announces this, but then Ginny calls for everyone to shut up, and they do. The first rush of adrenaline is slowly leaving Draco’s body, and as his head clears enough to think beyond impulsive urgency he starts to think that maybe this wasn’t the best idea. Draco did hear enough of Harry’s discussion with Longbottom to realize that it was Longbottom who had called for Ginny and the rest, not Potter. Draco extracts himself from the group and slinks back to the secret passageway, leaning against the wall beside it. He gets a couple of curious looks from the younger students; hostile ones from the people old enough to know him, but mostly he is ignored in favour of the new arrivals that people are actually happy to see. Apparently, everyone else knows each other. A lot of the younger students are crowding around Ginny; Lee and the twins are conspiring quietly with Cho, and Longbottom and Finnigan are talking animatedly with Thomas, possibly explaining why their faces look like they’ve had recent encounters with angry bridge trolls. There is much rejoicing all around, and Draco tries hard to make himself invisible.

-

When Potter finally comes back, most of the members of the Order of the Phoenix have trickled through the passageway from the Hog’s Head, and the room is even more crowded. The place is simmering with restless energy; ten minutes earlier they felt a shudder go through the walls, as if the castle was either coming awake or falling apart around them. As soon as Harry emerges, everyone turns to him. He doesn’t seem to mind this time, though. His face is different now, angry and determined.

“What’s going on?” one of the twins calls out.

“Voldemort is on his way. They’re evacuating the younger kids and everyone’s meeting in the Great Hall to get organized,” Harry says. “We’re fighting.”

There’s a cheer and a surge of movement to the door, and Draco unpeels himself from his spot by the wall. Then he feels a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

“Good to see you here,” says Lupin. “You ready?”

Draco grimaces.

“As ready as I’m going to be, I think.”

“I suppose that’ll have to do,” Lupin grins.

And they follow the others into the castle.

-

The students of Hogwarts are roused from their beds and shepherded sleepdrunk and confused into the Great Hall by their head of house. They listen along with the assembled members of Dumbledore’s Army and the Order of the Phoenix as McGonagall informs them that the Carrows have been incapacitated, that Severus Snape has fled the castle and that Lord Voldemort is on his way.

In the Room of Requirement, Ginny paces the floor with her wand in her hand, already knowing that she is going to break the promise she just gave her mother; that there is no chance in hell that she is going to stay hiding in there while everyone else fights.

And far beneath the cellars of the castle in the Chamber of Secrets, Ron and Hermione wrest yellowed fangs out of the skull of a long dead basilisk.

When Voldemort’s voice echoes through the castle, it reaches all of them, high and cold and clear as if it emanated from the walls themselves.

“I know that you are preparing to fight,” it says, and there are screams from the students in the Great Hall.

In the Room of Requirement, Ginny stops her pacing. In the Chamber of secrets, an armful of basilisk fangs clatters to the floor.

“Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood.”

“Give me Harry Potter,” it says, “and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded.”

Draco sees Harry stiffen as every pair of eyes in the Great Hall turns to him. There is a moment of perfect, echoing silence, and then he hears an all too familiar voice rise from the crowd.

“What are you all waiting for?” Pansy shrills. “He’s right there! Someone grab him!”

Draco catches a glimpse of her among the other Slytherins. Her face is pale, her eyes are wide and terrified. She looks so much younger than he remembered.

-

While the evacuees are led to the Room of Requirement, Harry chases down Helena Ravenclaw’s ghost and finally figures out the location of the last Horcrux. He runs into Ron and Hermione on the way to the Room of Requirement. They show him the shattered cup and he tells them breathlessly of the Room of Hidden Things.

The Room of Requirement won’t change while someone is still inside. Ginny doesn’t even bother asking what they need the room for when the trio ask her to leave, and by the time Crabbe and Goyle perish in the fiendfyre, she has already joined the battle raging in the halls outside.

The Death Eaters have breached the castle. Draco was with the group led by Lupin and Mr Weasley onto the grounds to defend the main gate, but they fell back once Voldemort’s giants started tearing the wrought iron gates from their hinges. The Entrance Hall is in chaos and Draco is nearly trampled as transfigured tables gallop down the steps, herded by professor McGonagall. A curse misses him by a mere inch and he doesn’t even know who cast it, if it was even aimed at him. There are duellers all over the hall, and Draco throws curses and stunning spells at every masked Death Eater close enough for him to aim.

And then Voldemort’s voice sounds through the castle once more, commanding his troops to retreat.

“You have fought valiantly,” says the high, cold voice, “Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful. I have called my forces to retreat. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.”

From somewhere higher in the castle sounds the crack of a spell and there’s the sound of stone collapsing, and then the silence in the castle is complete. Draco slumps against the wall behind him, heaving for breath. There is a gash in his arm he hadn’t noticed. His left sleeve is soaked through with blood. He is not the only one injured nor the one who has suffered the worst. Not very far from him, there’s a girl kneeling next to a fallen body, mumbling something too quiet for him to make out, but everyone else is quiet, unmoving. Waiting for an explanation for Voldemort’s sudden mercy.

Maybe it’s just the exhaustion, the adrenaline, the lack of sleep, but when Voldemort speaks again Draco feels like the voice is not just surrounding them, but echoing inside his head.

“I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you,” it says. “You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.”

One hour. Draco rouses himself and joins the girl by the body on the floor.

“Do you need help carrying him?” he asks.

-

Ginny is among the last to make it to the Great Hall. Even with Dean supporting her as she limps down the stairs, trying not to put any weight on her injured foot, it still takes forever.

“My mum is going to kill me,” she mutters as they wait on a landing for the right staircase to swing their way. “I swear, she won’t even let them heal me, she’ll be so mad I tried to fight she’ll just do the Death Eaters’ job for them.”

Dean laughs.

“Your mum sounds terrifying,” he says. “I still remember the howler she sent Ron when we were twelve.”

“Yeah, honestly, I blame Fred and George. The only reason she has such a short fuse with me and Ron is because they managed to use up all her patience before we were even born.”

-

Neville meets them in the Great Hall as soon as they’re through the door, looking impossibly even worse for wear than he did before the battle.

“You need to go see your family,” he says, and his face is all wrong.

She grimaces.

“Shit, did my mum already find out I left the Room?”

“No, I- it’s fine, Dean, I’ll take her,” he says.

She shifts her weight onto him and as she does, she catches sight of her family, gathered at the far end of the hall. And of the body on the ground.

“Ginny, I’m so sorry,” Neville says, but his voice sounds very far away.

-

In the lull of the ceasefire, Harry, Ron and Hermione make their way back from the Shrieking Shack. The castle is eerily quiet after the battle.

“I’ll meet you in the Great Hall,” Harry says, leaving Ron and Hermione to walk by himself to the headmaster’s office with Snape’s memories clutched in his clammy hands.

He’s alone when he empties the vial into the pensieve. He’s alone when he sinks into the memories of the man who tormented him and his friends for years, who loved his mother and who loved Harry’s eyes but cared nothing for any other part of him. Who killed Dumbledore to spare Draco. Who spied and lied for Dumbledore for years, and who Dumbledore lied to in turn, just as he lied to Harry and everyone else as he carried out his complicated plans for the greater good.

He’s alone when he rises back out of the memories and quietly lets the knowledge sink into him that he’s going to have to die.

It’s different from the knowledge he has carried with him since he was 11, that Voldemort was out there and wanted him dead. Different from what he learned when he was 14, that Voldemort would kill good people for no reason other than they happened to be in his way, that just by living, Harry was putting everyone around him at risk. Different from what he learned at 15 – that neither can live while the other survives.

He isn’t shocked. He has known for so long that he might die at Voldemort’s hand. What’s new is the certainty, and it settles like a hollow ache in his chest.

He’s alone and he’s invisible under his cloak as he walks back out through the castle. He glances into the great hall when he passes, seeing the people moving about in the golden light, the injured laid out on the tables, the dead laid out on the floor. He hesitates, wanting desperately to catch a last glimpse of Ron and Hermione, but maybe it’s good that he doesn’t. He’s not sure he could keep walking if he did.

On the stairs he passes Oliver Wood, who is carrying Colin Creevey’s tiny corpse inside.

He passes Neville and remembers that he isn’t done yet, that there are parts of Dumbledore’s plan that have yet to fall into place and he needs to make sure they all keep moving even after he’s gone. So he pulls off the cloak for long enough to tell Neville about Nagini. Dumbledore died knowing that there were three people left who knew about the Horcruxes; now Neville will take Harry’s place and there will still be three in on the secret.

There is someone helping an injured girl to her feet, and it’s only when he’s close enough to hear them speak that he realizes it’s Draco.

“It’s all right,” he’s saying quietly. “It’s okay. We’re going to get you inside now.”

“But I want to go home,” the girl whispers. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”

Harry doesn’t stop. He passes them like a ghost, and he isn’t afraid yet, but the cold weight in his chest feels like it’s going to choke him, and he feels so incredibly lonely.

He walks into the forest accompanied by the dead, leaving the living behind, and when he reaches the Death Eaters, the hour is almost up.

“I thought he would come,” Voldemort says, a dark silhouette in front of the fire in their midst, Nagini floating in her shimmering, magical cage by his side, addressing his Death Eaters who stand restless and nervous around the clearing. “I expected him to come.”

Harry pulls off his cloak and stuffs it beneath his robes along with his wand. He does not want to be tempted to fight.

“I was, it seems… mistaken,” Voldemort says.

And Harry steps into the clearing, heart pounding in his chest as if it wants to escape the body he is about to cast aside.

“You weren’t,” he says.

A cry rises from the gathered Death Eaters, laughter from some, and louder than all of them, Hagrid’s terrified roar, the creaking of the tree they have tied him to as he struggles to break free. Voldemort turns to Harry, something moving over his inexpressive face.

“Harry Potter,” he says very quietly. “The boy who lived.”

And then Voldemort steps towards him and raises his wand. Harry isn’t sure if the clearing actually falls quiet or if he is only imagining it as the world seems to shrink and contain only him and Voldemort and the wand pointed at his chest, and he wants it to happen now, while he is still in control of himself, before the fear roaring through his body takes over and-

He sees Voldemort’s mouth move and a flash of green light.

-

When Harry wakes, he’s lying on the forest floor, his glasses askew, his arm crushed painfully under his body, and every part of him aches. There’s a feeling like burning on his chest where the Killing Curse hit him. He expected cheers of triumph, but the forest is quiet. He hears the concerned mutterings of Bellatrix as she tries to help Voldemort to his feet from where he fell.

“I do not require assistance,” Harry hears him hiss, and then louder: “The boy… is he dead?”

He feels the eyes of every creature in the clearing upon him, but no one moves towards him.

“You,” says Voldemort. “Examine him. Tell me whether he is dead.”

Harry lies very still and tries not to breathe, wills his aching body not to twitch as he hears the sound of footsteps in the dry leaves on the ground. Then someone is leaning over him, long hair brushes his face and then he feels the press of cold fingers against his neck where his pulse is hammering out its betrayal: _I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive_.

“Are they alive?” the man whispers, leaning so close Harry can smell his rank breath on his face. “They said Draco… is he in the castle?”

“Yes,” Harry breathes back.

The hand on his throat tightens for a moment, and then Lucius Malfoy rises to his feet.

“He is dead,” he calls to the others.

-

Draco waits in the Great Hall as the last minutes of the ceasefire tick by. His arm has been healed. He’s fine. His hands are still shaking, but it might just be from having been out in the cold too long, getting everyone left out there inside.

He stays as far away as he can from the Weasley family. He tries not to look too much at the bodies. He wants to cry or scream at the horror of it all, but he has no right to. He barely knew any of them.

Lupin looks so much younger in death. Draco thought of him as old, but maybe it was just because he always seemed so tired, so worn out. Tonks looks like she is asleep next to him. She still reminds Draco of his mum. It’s an awful thought to have, as if he is grieving someone else in her stead, as if he only minds that Tonks is dead because his memory is playing tricks on him. She just had a kid, he remembers.

He hasn’t seen Fred Weasley since they carried him in.

He barely knew any of them, but he wanted to. He thought he could have. He thought maybe he was starting to, even if it was just a little bit.

“Have you seen Harry?” someone asks, and he looks up to see Neville Longbottom with his battered face standing in front of him.

“No,” Draco says, happy for the distraction if nothing else. He glances around the Hall even though he already knows Potter isn’t there. “I haven’t seen him since the battle started. Don’t Granger and Weasley know?”

“I haven’t asked them,” Longbottom says, glancing towards the Weasley family, “but he was by himself earlier, I saw him out on the grounds.”

Draco feels a chill run down his spine, a fresh fear rippling through him.

“What do you mean he was by himself?” he asks. “What was he doing?”

“I don’t know. He was under his invisibility cloak, just stopped to tell me… something.”

“What kind of _something_?”

Longbottom narrows his eyes at him.

“Why do you want to know?” he asks.

“Never mind,” Draco mutters, eyes sweeping over the people in the Great Hall again even though he knows that _Potter isn’t there_. He starts to move away from him, but Longbottom grabs his arm.

“Malfoy, what’s going on? Do you know something?”

Draco tries to shake Longbottom off. His heart is pounding. He might be wrong, of course, just because Harry isn’t there doesn’t mean that- but he needs to go. He needs to go make sure.

“Did you see where he was going?” he snaps at Longbottom. “Did you even bother to _ask_?”

Longbottom’s eyes widen as understanding finally dawns on him.

“He wouldn’t – Harry wouldn’t do that, he’s not an idiot!”

But Draco remembers the clear, cold voice of Lord Voldemort ringing through the castle one hour ago, promising to kill every man, woman and child standing between him and Potter. He remembers that soft snakelike whisper: _you have permitted your friends to die for you._ And he can tell from the look on Longbottom’s face that he remembers it too, and they both know that Potter is _exactly_ that kind of idiot.

“Come on,” Draco says, dragging Longbottom with him rather than trying to get free.

Longbottom lets go anyway, and then they are both running, out of the Great Hall, through the Entrance Hall and the open oak doors, into the cold night air outside. And then they halt on the steps of the castle as they catch sight of the procession walking towards them from the forest, the Death Eaters and giants and spiders spearheaded by Voldemort and the lumbering shape of Hagrid beside him. Draco’s breath comes hard and fast, forming clouds in the air. His body still wants to run, but there’s nowhere to go. There wasn’t ever anywhere to go, except a moment ago a small part of him had hoped that there was still time, and now he knows there isn’t. And so he stands quietly next to Neville Longbottom and watches Voldemort’s army approach. There are other people filtering out from inside the castle. Maybe they saw him and Longbottom leave. Maybe the hour is up and they are just heading back to their posts. Draco barely notices them, his eyes instead drawn to the shape in Hagrid’s arms, still too far away in the dark for him to make out.

Then the Death Eaters reach the courtyard and Voldemort’s voice rises again. For the third time this night, it echoes over the castle grounds:

“Harry Potter is dead!”

Next to him, Draco hears Longbottom breathe out a quiet “no”. The Death Eaters fan out to either side of where Voldemort stopped, a wall of black-clad bodies with masked faces. Hagrid is sobbing. The shape in his arms is a body.

“He was killed as he ran away,” Voldemort continues, his voice magically enhanced so everyone in the castle can hear him. “Trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone. The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman, or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come out of the castle now, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together.”

Draco is jostled forwards as more people pour out of the castle, to see it with their own eyes as Hagrid, tears streaming down his rough face, places Harry’s body at Voldemort’s feet. Draco knows he’s still standing, because he can still see them, but all he can feel is that he is falling and falling and falling.

The first scream comes from Professor McGonagall, and Draco had never imagined that a person could make a sound like that.

Somewhere far away he can hear Weasley and Granger too, calling Harry’s name, and Draco feels the same agonized cry rising inside him too, but it is stuck in his throat and all he can do is stand there, immobilized, falling.

He can’t make out Harry’s face. He wants to stop looking, but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from where Harry’s hair curls on the ground, the lifeless tangle of limbs, and he hates him for being dead, and he hates himself, hates all of them, for making him die for them.

He doesn’t realize how loud the cacophony around him has become until a hush suddenly falls over all of them, a collective intake of breath. He doesn’t notice Longbottom leaving his side, until he sees him dash across the open space of the courtyard, wand raised – and then with a flick of Voldemort’s hand, Neville is thrown to the ground, wand clattering away over the flagstones. Distantly, the part of Draco that is still him, that is not frozen or falling or screaming, notes that all Gryffindors are idiots.

“And who is this?” the Dark Lord says in his soft snake’s hiss. “Who has volunteered to demonstrate what happens to those who continue to fight when the battle is lost?”

Beside him, Bellatrix Lestrange lets out a deranged, high pitched giggle.

“It’s Neville Longbottom, my Lord! The boy who has been giving the Carrows so much trouble! The son of the aurors, remember?”

“Ah, yes, I remember,” says Voldemort, watching Neville struggle back to his feet, unarmed and unprotected, standing in the no-man’s-land between the survivors and the Death Eaters. “But you are a pureblood, aren’t you, my brave boy?”

“So what if I am?” Neville spits.

Draco’s fingers twitch, he realizes he’s still holding his wand. But Draco isn’t a Gryffindor and he isn’t an idiot. There’s nothing he can do. He still doesn’t want to watch him die.

“You show spirit and bravery and you come of noble stock,” Voldemort says, still in that silky voice, still loud enough to carry so all of them can hear him, continuing with his absurd theatrics, as if anyone would care about his gloating. “You will make a very valuable Death Eater. We need your kind, Neville Longbottom.”

A jagged sound erupts from Longbottom’s throat, too rough to really be a laugh.

“I’ll join you when hell freezes over,” he says. “Dumbledore’s Army!” he shouts, raising a fist into the air, and an answering cheer rises from the crowd around Draco, cut short a second later at a whip of Voldemort’s wand that crushes it under a silencing spell.

And maybe the spell is immobilizing too, or maybe some of them are still hoping that Voldemort will spare them, or maybe it’s just that even though the crowd is full of Gryffindors, Longbottom was the only one brave enough to keep fighting when they are this magnificently outnumbered. Either way, not a single person moves as the Sorting Hat is summoned from within the castle, placed on Longbottom’s head and set on fire.

And then, everything happens very quickly.

Somehow, Longbottom breaks the body bind curse that was put on him, and as he throws the still burning hat to the ground, a sword appears in his hand. Draco sees him strike, and for a second it looks like he might manage the impossible, except he does not aim for Voldemort – instead, he shatters the shimmering cage that held Voldemort’s snake, cutting the beast in half.

And then Draco doesn’t see any more, as all around him, fighting breaks out again. They are still outnumbered; the doors of the castle are wide open and they are forced back into the Entrance Hall as the Death Eaters charge once again.

Draco still feels barely in control of his own body as he stumbles through the chaos, dodging spells and bodies and unable to get a clear shot at anyone. And then he hears an achingly familiar voice calling out to him:

“Draco!”

He spins around in time to see his father, unmasked and hollow-faced, pushing his way towards him.

“ _Stupefy_!” Draco screams.

He only has a fraction of a second to see the curse hit, and then there is a loud blast on his right and Draco is thrown to the ground, his head knocking hard against the marble floor, and darkness swallows him.


	9. St Mungo's

When Draco wakes up, he is in a white room in a soft bed, and it feels like someone has nailed an iron spike through his temple. There is a moment where the pain is all he notices, and he does not wonder where he is or how he got there. And then he remembers. He jerks upright, throwing the bed covers aside and scrambling for his wand, which isn’t there, and then someone grabs him and there’s a hand on his chest, pushing him back into the bed.

“Calm down!” the healer says. “Calm down, you’re alright, you’re safe.”

He doesn’t calm down. Not for a while. Another healer is called in, they try to give him a calming draught, and Draco knocks it out of her hand before she can force it down his throat, the vial smashing against the floor, so he ends up in a body bind curse.

They keep telling him the battle is over, as if he hadn’t figured out that much by himself, but he doesn’t understand why he is in the hospital, why he isn’t dead or captured, and then someone has the bright idea to bring him a copy of the _Prophet_.

They lift the body bind after he promises not to try to run, and he takes the paper with shaking hands and stares at the nonsensical headline. It’s a lie, of course, the Prophet has been telling the Ministry’s lies for months, but he doesn’t understand why they would write this. He knows they didn’t win. Or, even if they did, if someone managed to take Voldemort out after Draco was knocked unconscious, he knows it wasn’t Potter. Potter is dead.

“I have other patients to attend to,” the healer says, and he looks up at her, standing by the foot of his bed, forced patience on her face. “Can I trust you to stay put? You have a nasty fracture in your skull. You need to rest while it heals.”

She looks exhausted, he notices now. There are bags under her eyes, her uniform is just pulled on over her regular clothes and there are tendrils of hair escaping from the band she has used to pull it back. He has to ask for something simple. A copy of The Quibbler? But no, The Quibbler was spewing propaganda too, he needs to talk to someone, someone he can trust, someone who was there. His first thought is Mrs Weasley, but he can’t, her son just died. For a second he considers asking for Lupin, before he remembers with a painful stab that he is gone too.

“I need to talk to Lee Jordan,” he says.

“Is he a family member?”

Draco starts to shake his head, then stops when pain shoots through his skull once more.

“He’s just… a friend. He was in the battle too.”

The healer nods.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says.

She leaves and Draco lies back in his bed and stares at the ceiling above. The minutes pass with excruciating sluggishness. There are white curtains between his bed and the others in the room, he doesn’t know if there is anyone else in there with him, but if there is, they are quiet. He listens to the quick footsteps of people in the hallway outside, tries to make sense of their conversation as they pass. He comes up with and discards about fifty escape plans while he waits.

And after a small eternity, when his healer returns, she is miraculously followed by Lee Jordan. The relief at seeing a familiar face rolls through Draco’s body like a slow tide.

“Mr Jordan really shouldn’t be out of bed either,” the healer says. “I’ll give you two a couple of minutes, and then he needs to go back, understand?”

Draco nods. The healer places a bottle of calming draught on his bedside table like a threat before she leaves. Lee drags over a chair and sits down. Draco pushes himself upright in bed, ignoring the pounding in his head.

“You asked for me, apparently?” Lee says.

Lee’s arm is in a sling. There’s a white bandage wrapped around his shoulders and blue-black lines spreading in a web over his skin from his neck almost to his fingertips.

“One of the spiders got me,” he says when he notices Draco’s staring. “I should be fine. I’m on the first floor – creature-induced injuries. What happened to you?”

“Hit my head,” Draco says. “I don’t really remember, I- how long has it been?”

“Two days."

“What happened?”

Lee shrugs, then winces.

“I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. It was kind of a mess, and also I had a lot of poison in my body by the time the battle ended. They’ve probably got a better overview of events than I do,” he says, tapping the newspaper still lying on Draco’s bed.

“They say we won,” Draco says.

“Yeah, I know that much. The centaurs joined the fight. And the house-elves. We managed to turn the tide.”

“They say Voldemort is dead. That Potter killed him.”

Lee nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Fuck, it’s weird that you’re just finding it all out now...”

“Potter is dead,” Draco says. “I saw him, we all did, he was dead-“

But Lee just shakes his head, and that yawning vertigo opens up in Draco’s gut again.

“He wasn’t. It was a trick.”

Lee smiles and Draco’s first thought is that he must be imperiused, because why else would Lee be lying?

“I know what I saw.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t a good trick,” Lee says. “I don’t know how he pulled it off, he was going on about Voldemort’s wand when he was duelling him, something about how he hadn’t won it from its rightful owner so that’s why his spells didn’t work – I didn’t really understand it, like I said, poison, but-“

“Lee, I- he’s fucking _dead_ , please don’t lie to me, I can’t-” Draco cuts himself off when his voice starts to wobble.

Lee’s smile falters.

“He came back,” he says. “I’m not lying.”

Draco stares at him. He tries to look for the lie on his face, but can’t find it. He looks clear-eyed and focused too.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, his voice breaking on the last word. His eyes are burning again, he can feel the tears coming. “I thought he died.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee says.

He places a careful hand on Draco’s shoulder. Draco swallows painfully. His throat twists and twists and he holds his breath for a long time, because he knows when he breathes again it will come out a sob. He’s alive, he tries to think, but all he can see is that skinny, lifeless body on the ground and all the anger and grief is still curled up inside him, and there is no relief, just burning eyes and knives in his throat. He pulls up his knees and hides his face in the blanket as the first sob wrecks through him like it’s going to pull him apart. He thought he was holding it in, but it turns out the tears had started flowing without him even noticing, he can feel the fabric getting soaked, he presses it against his mouth to quieten the heaving sound of his breaths. He feels the light pressure of Lee’s hand lift from his back.

“I guess I’ll just… leave you alone for a bit,” Lee says quietly.

His chair scrapes. The door closes behind him.


	10. Endings I

The Battle of Hogwarts is the end of the war, but there are a lot of other endings after that. Smaller or bigger ones, depending on your point of view.

There were a lot of casualties in the battle, and so the time afterwards is marked more by goodbyes than celebration. There are a lot of funerals. There are a lot of funerals with the same handful of people attending them as Order members and family members are buried and the new, bright world that is supposedly ahead of them feels like a lie suspended in a distant and inaccessible future.

At Fred’s funeral, Harry sits with the Weasley family during the service. He and Hermione are on either side of Ron, who sits stiff and pale through the whole thing, gripping Hermione’s hand so tight his knuckles are turning white. Ginny is a couple of seats from Harry, with Luna’s arm curled around her as she cries quietly into her shoulder.

As they are leaving the funeral to head back to the Burrow, he thinks he spots Draco. But he isn’t at the wake, so maybe he was mistaken.

-

Harry doesn’t remember much of Lupin’s funeral. He spends most of it clutching a piece of parchment with a handful of words on it. He tried to write something, but none of it came out right. He has to make some kind of speech and he does his best, but none of the words seem big or heavy enough.

\- 

Tonk’s wake is held at her mother’s house, everyone gathered in the living room in their black robes, drinking butterbeer and sharing stories from before Harry knew her. The solemnity is pierced at frequent intervals by Teddy’s crying, until someone finally manages to get him to fall asleep in some other room. There are a lot of people Harry doesn’t know, and he has found he isn’t very good at funerals either way. He never knows what to say, and so he spends most of this one sitting in a corner with Ron and Hermione, and trying to be polite to the strangers who come over to shake his hand.

-

Ginny is so fucking tired of funerals. She is tired of people being dead, she is tired of talking about dead people and she is tired of the look her mother gives her whenever she catches her sneaking another glass of wine. Ginny is good at sneaking, though. Her mum would probably have intervened with more than just a stern glance if she knew how many glasses Ginny has actually had at this point. She’s not drunk, but she’s well on her way.

Luna steals her glass as soon as Ginny returns to her, perching on the armrest of the chair Luna has curled up in. She takes a sip before handing it back.

“This should probably be the last one,” she says.

Ginny rolls her eyes.

“Not you too,” she grumbles.

Luna reaches up to brush Ginny’s hair back behind her ear and smiles softly.

“You don’t want to be drunk,” she says.

“I really, really think I do,” Ginny mutters, but she lets Luna steal the glass back anyway.

“I don’t think I should have come today,” Luna says after a little while. “I didn’t know her.”

“Well I did, and I want you here,” Ginny says.

Luna hums thoughtfully and keeps sipping her wine, and Ginny frowns down at her, because that isn’t a very Luna-like thing to be concerned about.

“Did someone say something?” she asks.

Luna shrugs.

“Not really. I was talking to Professor McGonagall and Ron made a comment but… no, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”

Ginny bristles. She is pretty damn sure he did.

“I’ll be right back,” she says, standing up.

Luna grabs her hand.

“You don’t need to,” she says, “it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. I’ll be quick, alright?”

She squeezes Luna’s hand before she lets go and slips away to find Ron.

-

“Why are you being a dick to Luna?” she says the second she has closed the hallway door behind them.

They are in an empty part of the house, a study or something – the important part is that they’ve got a bit of privacy, because Ginny is already fuming and there is a limit to how much dumb shit Ron can say before she starts yelling.

“I’m not,” Ron says, getting a head start on the dumb shit.

He looks thoroughly uncomfortable in his black funeral robes. Ginny’s face is burning, probably as much from the wine as from her anger.

“Ron, seriously, we don’t have to do this. Just tell me what your fucking problem is.”

Ron folds his arms across his chest and looks away.

“Maybe I just think it’s a little weird you keep bringing her along to funerals for people she didn’t know,” he says, and he doesn’t even bother trying to make it sound like he means it.

“I know this is about Harry.”

Ron exhales loudly and slumps back against the wall.

“And what if it is?” he says. “Do you really think this is fair to him?”

A sardonic, little laugh forces its way up her throat.

“You are fucking unbelievable sometimes, you know that?”

“What, because I find it just a little bit odd that before we went on that horcrux hunt, you and Harry were clearly still into each other, but now that he’s back you’re suddenly girlfriends with Luna Lovegood, and even though that came absolutely out of nowhere-“

“It was not out of nowhere!” she snaps. “Merlin, not all of us need to spend seven fucking years pining after the same person before finally doing something about it!”

Ron blushes violently, and she knows that was a low blow, but she is drunk and she doesn’t care and she is not in the mood for being reasonable.

“All I’m saying is, Harry’s bloody miserable.”

She rolls her eyes.

“It’s a funeral, Ron, everybody’s _bloody miserable_.”

“So you really think it’s got nothing to do with you?”

“I think maybe it isn’t my responsibility how Harry feels,” she snaps.

“I’m not saying it’s your responsibility, I’m saying I’m kind of surprised that you don’t even care!”

“Of course I care! But what do you want me to do? I can’t just go be his girlfriend because that’s what you think he _deserves_ , like I’m some sort of prize he gets in the end. I know that’s what you all want for him – you all want him to have a happy ending, you know - good job, you killed the evil wizard, here’s the girl and half the kingdom.”

Ron runs a hand over his face in exasperation.

“Merlin’s tits, Gin, none of us think that,” he says. “But have you two even talked since we came back? I know he was away for a long time, I get that a lot of shit happened, but I mean… couldn’t you at least have talked to him about it before you started parading around with Luna?”

“Parading around? Really? _He_ broke up with _me_ ,” she says. “A _year_ ago.”

“Yeah, to keep you safe, so Voldemort wouldn’t go after you!”

“Right. You were all so busy keeping me _safe_ , weren’t you?” she says, and it comes out a snarl. “Well, guess what? I wasn’t. I wasn’t safe, and maybe I didn’t want to be. So yeah, a lot of _shit_ happened while he was gone. You have no idea what it was like at Hogwarts, you don’t get to judge me.”

“I’m not judging you,” he says, and the look on his face is so tired and sad, she considers just getting the hell out of there.

“Yes, you are!”

She hates that he isn’t angry, that her chest keeps winding itself tighter and tighter, and he just stands there looking _tired_ and _sad_ for her so she can’t even scream at him. She doesn’t want to talk calmly about Hogwarts or about Harry’s feelings. She wants to have a screaming row, she wants to break things, and then she wants to go curl up in Luna’s bed and never talk to another person again.

“I know what you’re all thinking, you, and Hermione and dad and mum. You all think I moved on too quick. That I’m being unfair to him, that I’m the one who’s making him all glum and depressed. And the ridiculous thing is, he’s the only one who _gets it_ , he’s the only one who isn’t mad at me, because unlike you he _knows_ he didn’t break up with me so I could be _safe_ until he got back. He broke up with me because he thought he wasn’t coming back.”

Ron' face falls, the way it does whenever Harry’s fake death is mentioned.

“He didn’t think that,” he says.

“You know he walked into that forest thinking he was going to die. I don’t know how he pulled off his trick, but we both know that even if he did have a plan, it wasn’t a good one, and he would have done it anyway.”

“He didn’t plan on it, it was because of Snape’s memories that- look, it’s a long story, but he wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for-“

“That’s bullshit,” she snaps. “He was ready to die the second you three left the Burrow.”

“No, Ginny, there’s some things you don’t know about,” he says, and his voice goes all soft and condescending. “If you would just talk to him-“

“I’ll talk to him when you all stop acting like Luna is just a temporary stand-in until he and I get back together. I’m not saying he isn’t fucked up, he obviously is, and I’m worried about him too, but I can’t help him and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me to. So if you actually think it’s his fucking love life that’s the problem, why don’t you ask him to talk to Malfoy instead?”

Ron’s face curls into a confused frown.

“Uh, what?”

She scoffs.

“I mean, if we’re talking about moving on too quickly, I think that’s the bit you should be taking issue with. Not for my sake, I’m over it, but-”

“Ginny, what are you talking about?” he says, which is when she realizes that he actually doesn’t know.

“He didn’t tell you?” she asks, feeling suddenly deflated. She was certain he would have. All that time just the three of them hiding out in the countryside, surely it would have come up.

“ _Tell me what_?” Ron demands, and there is a second where she thinks she is going to tell him. There is a part of her that genuinely wants to – so maybe she isn’t entirely over it, and maybe she is still mad at Harry. She isn’t sure whether or not she cares about keeping his secrets for him, but if she tells Ron about it, there is no way she will ever be able to make it about Luna again, if it even was at any point. It won’t even be about herself, and maybe she kind of wanted it to be, just once.

“How about you take your own advice and ask him?” she mutters, turning towards the door, but Ron grabs her arm before she can get to it.

“Is this about last summer? I know there was something going on with Malfoy and Harry, more than their regular bullshit, but Harry wouldn’t tell me-” he cuts himself off, his eyes go wide. “Wait. Ginny, are you saying you and Malfoy were-“

It’s a miracle she doesn’t punch him. Mostly it’s because she isn’t actually surprised that that’s the conclusion he would jump to. Her fifth year feels a thousand years away, but she knows Ron still sees her like he did back then, that it plays a part in why he is mad about Luna. Because he thinks her affection is cheap and unreliable and superficial and something he somehow has to protect both her and everyone else from.

“No,” she says icily, jerking her arm free. “I wasn’t snogging Malfoy. Harry was.”

“ _What?”_

She yanks the door open.

“Ginny, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Ask him yourself!” she snaps.

She stomps down the hallway, back to the living room and the other guests. Ron doesn’t follow.

-

Some of the guests have started to leave when she gets back, the living room not nearly as full as it was when she left. Her mum and dad are talking with Andromeda and Professor McGonagall, they don’t seem to have noticed that her and Ron slipped away or that she has come back. She doesn’t see Luna, and she feels a stab of bad conscience for leaving her behind. She is about to go look for her when she spots Harry and Hermione, still sitting in the same corner she left them in when she pulled Ron away. And she could just leave it. She wants to. But not all of this is actually Harry’s fault, and she might be angry with him, but she is angry with everyone these days, and maybe he does deserve a bit of warning.

“Hi,” Harry says when he notices her, and he sounds completely normal, like they aren’t at a funeral, and this isn’t the first time since the battle that she has actually sought him out. “Did Ron not come back with you?”

“He’ll probably be here in a bit,” she says.

“Are the two of you okay?” Hermione asks.

Ginny shrugs.

“He was being a dick about Luna.”

Hermione grimaces.

“I told him not to-"

"It’s fine,” Ginny cuts her off. “It’s fine. We talked.” She turns to Harry. “I told him about you and Draco. I thought he already knew, but… yeah, apparently he didn’t.”

She watches Harry’s face fall, and for a second he looks genuinely horrified.

“I… you know?”

She shrugs.

“Draco told me. Anyway, I need to go find Luna, I kind of left her to go yell at Ron. Sorry for telling your secret, I guess, but also seriously, Harry, you need to talk to people.”

She turns around to walk away before Harry can answer, which one could possibly claim would be a bit contradictory to the advice she just gave him, but she isn’t the one he needs to talk to. She hears Hermione round on him the second she has turned away:

“What thing with Malfoy?”

There’s a strangled sound from Harry.

“I’ll… fuck, I’ll tell you about it when we get home.”

-

Ginny finds Luna outside on a bench overlooking the small garden. She sits down next to her. The sun is peeking through the clouds and there isn’t any wind on this side of the house. There is an apple tree that is white with flowers, and in the mild afternoon warmth with their sweet smell in the air, it almost feels like summer.

“Did you have your fight with Ron?” Luna asks.

“Yeah.”

“Did it help?”

“I don’t know. It was nice to get to say it. I think some of it was probably stuff I should have said to my mum instead.”

“You can still do that.”

“I will, just… I should probably be sober for that.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Luna says.

Ginny leans over, putting her head on Luna’s shoulder.

“I’m so tired. Can I stay at your house tonight?”

Luna pets her hair absentmindedly.

“Of course,” she says.

-

It’s early evening by the time Harry, Ron and Hermione get back to the Burrow with Mr and Mrs Weasley. Ron came back shortly after Ginny left, but by then Harry had convinced Hermione to save it for when they came home, so Ron held his questions too, but he kept looking at Harry like he had grown an extra head, and everything was awkward and quiet between them. By the time all of them have gathered in Ron and Harry’s shared room, Ron and Hermione sitting on the bed and Harry pacing back and forth, he is beginning to feel like he might throw up.

“Harry, you’re starting to worry me,” Hermione says, when Harry starts on his third trip across the room.

“I just… I didn’t want to tell you,” he says. “It’s not important.”

“Kind of seems like it’s important,” Ron says.

“It’s not!” he stops pacing and turns around to face them, Hermione still looks mostly concerned, but Ron is frowning, and Harry hates that he doesn’t know what Ginny told him, that he doesn’t even know how much Ginny knows. He takes a deep breath.

“Me and Malfoy had… a thing,” he says.

“What do you mean _a thing_?” Hermione asks.

“A snogging thing, apparently,” Ron says, and Hermione shoves him.

“Ron, don’t joke about-” she starts, and then seems to catch sight of Harry’s face.

He has no idea what expression he’s wearing.

“You’re serious?” she says.

“It was in fifth year!” Harry snaps. “And it was stupid, and it doesn’t matter!”

“Ginny said you cheated on her,” Ron says, and Harry flinches.

“I didn’t! I wouldn’t do that, if that’s what Malfoy told her-“

“Okay!” Ron says, holding up his hands placatingly. “She didn’t say that exactly, just something about how you moved on too quickly or something, which doesn’t make sense if this was something that happened when we were fifteen.”

“It came up again last summer,” he says, and he still sounds angry and defensive, and he knows he isn’t explaining anything.

“Came up how?” Hermione asks carefully.

“I don’t know, we just started…” he gestures vaguely, “we started talking and… you know, about what had happened, and him leaving the Death Eaters, and… but I wasn’t _with_ Ginny when it happened, it wasn’t like that!”

He can hear himself flailing. And Ron and Hermione were there, they know what that break up was like, and Ron even saw him when Ginny kissed him goodbye, and he was so angry about Harry playing with her feelings, and there is no way he can salvage this. “It was all kind of… messy,” he finishes.

Ron scoffs.

“Yeah, sounds like it. Why didn’t you tell us, Harry? I’ve been so… I thought Ginny screwed you over, what with the Luna thing and everything.”

Harry grimaces.

“There never really seemed to be a good time.”

“Is this why you were so obsessed with him in sixth year,” Hermione says, leaning forward, an inquisitive wrinkle between her eyebrows. “You know, when you kept saying he was a Death Eater?”

“He _was_ a Death Eater,” Harry mutters.

“Yeah, I’m kind of surprised that didn’t stop you from snogging him,” Ron says. “I mean, he was such a little shit. I guess he kind of toned it down these last years, but when we were fifteen…”

“I know!” Harry snaps. “I know, but it was… it made sense, alright? Or it didn’t, but I just-“

He hadn’t thought anyone would ever find out. He hadn’t thought he would ever like him, and that had been the point. He never thought he would have to have this conversation, and he hates the way Ron and Hermione look at him, Ron like he can’t decide whether to laugh or get angry, Hermione like Harry is a math problem she hasn’t solved right, and he doesn’t want to drag everything with Malfoy out in front of their scrutiny like this, to let them pick it apart. Fifth year feels like an eternity ago, like something that happened to different people, and maybe he could tell them about that - they are his closest friends and they have already seen every other ugly part of him, and the easiest thing would be to tell them that that was all it was, but does that mean he just keeps lying about the rest? About how he misses him, that he knows he should have visited him, or written to him or something, anything, but he hasn’t, and now it might be too late? That he hates how the Weasleys talk about him like they know him now, because it makes it feel like he doesn’t? That whatever they had was not _nothing_ , but he isn’t sure what it was, and whatever it is he wants from Draco, it might not be something he can still have? None of it really feels like something he can say aloud.

He folds his arms across his chest, looking at the wall behind them instead of their faces.

“I haven’t actually talked to him since we left.”

“Why not?” Hermione asks.

He shrugs.

“When you said you didn’t hate him anymore,” Ron says slowly. “Did you mean you were… you know, in love with him or something?”

“No!” Harry says. “No, obviously not! It was just…” he trails off again.

“Right, but Ginny seemed to think that’s what you’ve been so depressed about these last couple of weeks-” Ron starts.

“Well, it’s not like I’ve been talking to her either, is it?” Harry snarls. “And if you hadn’t noticed, everyone is fucking _dead_ , so I’m sorry if I haven’t been _cheery_ enough for you, in between all the fucking funerals!”

“Alright, Harry – Christ, I was just asking.”

“Yeah, but I don’t get what it is you want me to say. I had a thing with Malfoy. It was a year ago, and it’s over.” He takes a deep breath. “Can we please talk about something else?”

“Sure,” Ron says, getting to his feet with some finality, like whatever emergency meeting they were having is now over. “I’ll go ask mum if she needs any help with dinner. And Harry, if you’ve been sleeping with any other Death Eaters, would you mind keeping it secret for a while longer? I’ll just need a day to recover from this one.”

He pushes past Harry and lets himself out of the room.

“Sorry about that,” Hermione says. “I think we’re both just a bit-“

“It’s fine,” Harry says.

“And you’re sure you’re alright? You do seem kind of upset, and I’m sorry if you feel like we made you tell us something you weren’t ready to-”

“Hermione, I said it’s fine.”

“Okay,” she says. She stands up from the bed. “You coming downstairs?”

“I’ll… be down in a bit.”

“Right,” she says.

She pats his arm when she passes him. He listens to the sound of her steps receding down the creaking stairs. Then he slumps down on Ron’s now empty bed, elbows on his knees and head resting in his hands. He closes his eyes and takes another shuddering breath and waits for his guts to untie themselves.

-

When Harry comes downstairs, Ron is peeling potatoes and Hermione is reading at the dinner table. Mrs Weasley says she doesn’t need any more help, so Harry just sits down next to Hermione and fiddles with the place setting in front of him. When Mrs Weasley starts complaining about Ginny not coming back with them, Ron says that it’s nice her and Luna are so happy together, and Harry agrees, and Mrs Weasley says she didn’t mean anything by it, just that it’s been nice to have her home again. And by the time Percy and Mr Weasley join them for dinner, everything feels almost normal.


	11. Endings II

The Battle of Hogwarts is the end of the war, but there are a lot of other endings after that. Smaller or bigger ones, depending on your point of view.

After the funerals, there is the trials. Harry would prefer to stay out of them if he could. He doesn’t think he is ever going to feel comfortable stepping into The Department of Mysteries. There is something about having the highest court of law carry out its justice in secret underground rooms that really fails to inspire confidence in its fairness. That and his personal experience with the trials that have taken place there. The Ministry has been retaken, a lot of the members of the Wizengamot have been replaced, but Harry is not convinced that is going to be enough to actually make it function any differently than it did before the war. He can count on his fingers the number of adults he genuinely trusts, and not half of them are going to be in that court room.

He keeps his scepticism to himself, though. He avoids the _Prophet_ as much as possible, only doing one brief interview to give his endorsement of Kingsley Shacklebolt as acting Minister for Magic.

The war is over, but there is still so much left to do. Hermione is very involved. Many of the Order members are too, and Harry just… doesn’t have the energy.

He would probably be a key witness in a lot of the Death Eater trials, but since Voldemort did go to the effort of branding all his followers with a fairly recognizable tattoo, he figures they should be able to lock most of them up without his help.

He does agree to testify at one trial, though. He writes down his statement beforehand and has Hermione read it over.

“It’s good,” she tells him. “Very succinct. There are a couple of sentences-”

“Just change whatever it is,” he says.

She nods, and picks up her quill to cross out about the first half of his draft

“You don’t have to tell them you think they’re complete idiots, you know,” she says.

Harry shrugs.

“Might be good for them to know. Maybe they’ll try harder.”

Hermione glances up from the parchment to give him a withering glare.

“I’ll just say whatever you write for me, okay?”

She sighs and crosses out another sentence.

As the day of Lucius Malfoy’s trial draws closer, the nervous pit in Harry’s stomach only grows, and while he would like to believe that it’s all just discomfort at having to visit The Department of Mysteries, he knows it’s not.

Hermione has moved back in with her parents now that their memories have been restored, but she visits Harry and Ron at the Burrow almost every day. She also spends a lot of time at the Ministry, and has been sitting in on several of the Death Eater trials. Apparently, Draco has given testimony more than once about the things that went on in Malfoy Manor. Harry can tell from the way she looks at him when she mentions it that she wants to ask him about it. Ron has been giving him awkward looks too, whenever the trial comes up. Harry pretends not to notice.

-

“You nervous about seeing him again?” Ron asks the morning of the trial, when Harry is rooting through his suitcase for some somewhat formal looking robes.

Harry shrugs.

“Not really,” he says.

“You know I’m not… angry about it or anything, right? The thing with you and Malfoy.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Ron nods.

“Right. I get that it’s complicated. Feelings and all that.”

“I doubt I’ll see him, even if he’s there,” Harry says, and tries not to make it obvious how much he has been clinging to that _if_. They never talked about Draco’s father, but Harry can only imagine Draco’s feelings about him must be… complicated, at least. Maybe he won’t want to be there. “I’m just giving my statement, and then I’m leaving.”

“I guess,” Ron says. “Well, good luck anyway.”

-

He tries not to look for Draco when he enters the court room. In fact, he tries not to look at the audience at all. He tries to keep his eyes on the Wizengamot, but he can’t help glancing at the figure of Lucius Malfoy, sitting slumped and chained in the same chair that Harry once occupied. His long hair is matted, his robes dirty, and his eyes are wide and frightened. Harry is suddenly glad Hermione cut all the snark out of his statement, glad that most of the words he reads aren’t his own. She makes it all sound very proper and serious and clear cut. Yes, Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater, but he also saved Harry’s life. If it hadn’t been for him, Harry would be dead, and possibly, Voldemort would have survived.

By the time he finishes, his heart is pounding so hard in his chest, it’s making him feel unsteady, and he is grateful that some attendant steps in to escort him back out. He feels almost dizzy walking alone down the corridor to the elevator that will take him back up to the ground floor. He stands there and stares at the button that will call the elevator down from the higher levels, and he doesn’t press it. He waits for a long time in the eerie silence of The Department of Mysteries, his limbs locked by unfamiliar indecision. And then the elevator descends on its own, startling Harry out of his ruminations. He steps out of the way as the lattice pulls back, letting out a harried looking Ministry official, who only glances briefly in Harry’s direction, before setting off down a corridor.

He could go back. At least stay long enough to hear the sentencing. Find out if he managed to help at all, if it made any sort of difference.

Except then he will have to file out with the rest of them when it’s over. And he doesn’t know if Draco was there. He doesn’t know how Draco will feel about whatever the Wizengamot decides to do with Lucius. He doesn’t know if Draco even wanted Harry to defend him, or if he maybe would have wanted him to do more.

Harry steps into the elevator and lets it take him up to the ground floor while a sinking, empty feeling settles in his gut.

-

Harry takes the floo back to the Burrow and stumbles onto the living room carpet, dragging soot all over. Sun is seeping in through the windows, illuminating pillars of dust in the air. The house is quiet like Harry can hardly ever remember it being. He takes a long, deep breath, trying to make the tightness in his chest go away, but it stays, like he’s still in the floo, still being magically dragged spinning through hundreds of fireplaces.

It’s over. The thought feels solid for the first time. Voldemort is gone, and there is nothing left for him to do. No more funerals to attend, no more trials to prepare for. He won’t be going back to Hogwarts in September either. Tomorrow he will wake up and there will be nothing for him to get ready for, nothing for him to dread or look forward to. And the day afterward will be the same. And the day after that. He places a fumbling hand on the back of the sofa, heaves in another breath and tries not to get crushed under the weightlessness of it all. There’s a distant clatter of dishes from the kitchen, and his feet feel too heavy as he moves towards it.

“Harry!” says Mrs Weasley brightly when she spots him. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She puts down her wand next to the sink and hurries over. “Oh, you’re all covered in soot, did you have trouble with the floo?” she says, brushing the dust from his shoulders.

“No, it went fine,” he says, and his voice comes out nearly normal.

He’s a full head taller than her, he can see the top of her head. There’s so much grey in her hair. He doesn’t remember that, in his mind it’s still bright red. She looks up at him, and her face is older than he remembers it too.

“How did it go?” she asks.

“Fine,” he says. “I left before the sentencing, but…” He trails off. It had seemed so important this morning.

“I’m sure Mr Malfoy is very grateful,” she says with a tight little smile.

“Yeah.”

“And I’m sure Draco is too.”  
Harry swallows hard.

“Yeah.”

His eyes are stinging and he looks away.

“I’ll just… I think I’ll go to my room for a bit,” he says, but the tightness is creeping into his voice.

He blinks hard to stop his vision from blurring. Mrs Weasley sighs.

“Oh, Harry,” she says, folding him into her arms, and he curls into her like he is still a little kid, hiding his face in her shoulder, choking down on his breath, but he still shakes all the way down his spine.

“Shh,” she says, running her hands over his back. “It’s alright. It’s alright, Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is checking this story for updates today: I'm so sorry, but I won't be uploading ch12 this sunday. It really sucks, the whole reason it took so long for me to start posting this story was because I wanted to be sure I could post the whole thing without delays, but I had to do a quick rewrite on some things in the final chapter that turned out not to be so easy to fix after all, and then real life keeps happening, so I haven't had much time to work it out. I will try my best to get the final chapter up this week, but right now I'm not sure when exactly I'll be able to post it, it honestly depends on whether I manage to get over this stupid mental block. If it's any consolation, the delay is happening because I want the ending to be good and satisfying, and the current version is not doing a good enough job of that. Thanks for being patient with me.


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